I sympathise with what Rob is saying here, though point out that his experience is by no means unique to Rockjumpers. My own experience with Rockjumpers – in Cameroon – left much to be desired and indeed was quite scary. I was supposed to have been met at the airport but nobody was there; alone, I was seriously harassed by some very shady characters. The bottom line is that it is much better to get something organised with like-minded folk or friends. Greg
From:
robert morris < robert_p_morris@hotmail.com>
Date:
Sun, 1 Jan 2012 09:01:39 +0000
This is the feedback I gave to Rockjumpers about a tour I went on to PNG in August 2011. If you are a serious birder, I would not recommend travelling on their tour with 9 or 10 others. be warned or at least prepared…. I did not
receive an evaluation form before departing from the leaders – and I am happy to give constructive feedback. It won’t be pretty but the leaders will be perfectly aware of all the major issues: 1. the people on the tour were too old, unfit and had virtually no birding skills or knowledge2. because of 1 they: a) needed long rests ( I would go and bird alone most days in the breaks of up to 4 hours!). b) were more interested in eating than birding. c) could not walk far and struggled to walk up hill. Some trails were not even attempted. d) took a huge amount of time to see the birds. This was mainly because there was 1 scope between the 10 people and most had poor eye-sight. e) there were 12-14 pe ople going down narrow trails looking for shy birds which is a joke. I left
the group to bird independently at every opportunity. f) they made night birding a complete nightmare and I felt guilty for continuously raising the issue. I actually had to be left alone in remote locations in PNG jungles for many hours on end to see difficult species – such as Papuan hawk Owl. I did not in any way dislike the group or any individuals – but birding wise it ranged from a joke to a nightmare. These trips are NOT for real birders. They are for OLD people who are generally happy to spend 1 second looking down a telescope to tick something. If they glimpse a bird, a shadow etc. most of them count what they are told they’ve seen. I had my own Leica 77 for the whole trip and I was completely independent from the queue at one leader’s scope (the other leader rarely took his because it wasn’t working properly). Add to the
above the amount of time we stood around waiting for buses to show up because the agent didn’t have control of what was going on (we lost many, many hours of birding time), descriptions in the published itineraries which are at best ‘economical with the truth’ and good local bird guides that Rockjumpers booked and paid for who were ‘unavailable’ e.g. Daniel Wakra was guiding others when he should have been with us, and I spent most of the very trip frustrated. The leaders did help try me to bird alone where possible which I really appreciated and I did see a lot more birds than the general group – but overall I was bitterly disappointed with the whole experience. I actually feel really sorry for the leaders in a situation like
this. Cheers Rob Morris Rob Morris
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