Good advice! Especially if you're not familiar with the environment.

I thought about our last big trip in Africa - we visited 65 national parks/reserves and I find that we had guides at 18 of them:

- Mapungubwe NP, RSA – for a walking “safari”
- Mavela (Manyoni PGR), RSA – required to go along the river bed.
- Tsodilo Hills WHS, Botswana – to learn about the rock art
- Makgadikgadi Pans NP, Botswana – to know where to find meerkat
- Tuli Block, Botswana - for a walking “safari”, twice
- Ngonye Falls Community Partnership Park, Zambia – to know how to get to the falls
- Kafue NP, Zambia - for a walking “safari”
- Mount Mulanje Conservation Trust, Malawi – to lead us on the trails
- Nkotakhota NP, Malawi – opportunitistic, when elephants came down to the river
- Mahale Mountains NP, Tanzania – required to look for chimpanzees
- Mafia Island Marine Park, Tanzania – came with the boat
- Nyungwe NP, Rwanda – to guide us birdwatching
- Volcans NP, Rwanda – required to look for gorillas
- Queen Elizabeth NP, Uganda – opportunistic, from the park entry to lead us to tree-climbing lions
- Kibale NP, Uganda – required to look for chimpanzees
- Mabamba Wetland IBA, Uganda – to go looking for shoebills with the boat
- Saiwa Swamp NP, Kenya – to guide us birdwatching
- Central Island NP, Kenya – came with the boat

The rest of the time we guided ourselves, and this worked well - in fact many times we enjoyed things more - the safarimobile drivers were under pressure to show their passengers animals and tended to leave a given location after 10 minutes or so if there weren't prides of lions playing golf (or whatever) - we were happy to stay in the same place for a couple of hours, being rewarded often by wildlife which was not immediately apparent.