Travel reviews by Blackwinged stilts from UK

"This was a 5 star guesthouse as far as I was concerned. Excellent facilities and kept very clean and tidy. This is the sort of level all hostels/guesthouses should aspire to.

Very efficient service, excellent breakfast and lovely clean shared kitchen area to prepare your own meals in. Room was lovely and pool area was very nice with safe parking for the car. Would highly recommend this guesthouse to others."

"Good location and lovely courtyard area and pool area. Room was fine, perhaps a little dated in places and the toilet plumbing was not working very well.

Breakfast was of a much poorer standard to the Rivendell guesthouse. Evening meal was eaten at the hotel and was very nice and service was also good, so overall pretty happy with the place but nothing was exceptional about it."

"I really liked this place. The location was lovely and the pool area was probably my favourite of all the places I stayed - what a fantastic view from a pool !!. Initially I was a bit upset that we could not get into the Canon Lodge and ended up here but was very happy with everything at the village.

The food was excellent and I liked the buffet style. Service was also excellent and the sundowner walk was a very nice little extra."

"We were initially given a dingy room on the ground floor with bars on the window onto a very poor view which was also a smoking room and smelt awful. I asked for a room change and was given another room also on the ground floor, but non-smoking and with a better view. It would have been nice to have had a room with a balcony though.

The internet was not working during the length of our stay with no real explanation as to why. We could see that other people were wanting to use it and were also told just to try later but with no success and no explanation. The service at the front desk was the poorest here that was experienced in the whole trip but it was nothing to complain about particularly.

The hotel was clean and tidy and the pool area nice. Service in the restaurant area was good from some staff and poorer from others. Food was ok, but not as good as other locations."

"The location was beautiful and the accommodation was clean, tidy and spacious. The driveway up to the farm was a bit hard going for a 2wd as the farmer had put in some new humps which were a bit big for my car (we scraped over them) - but he had only just done this and mine was the first 2wd to come up the drive so he welcomed the feedback, even though it was a bit negative!!. I'm sure he will get the problem resolved though.

The couple running the farm and guesthouse were absolutely lovely. We went on a fantastic drive around the farm and had a great chat about what he does there. Excellent hosts and we really enjoyed our overnight stay here."

"This place was lovely. Loved the location and the view from the hill that you can climb just next to the homestead is outstanding. I thought this was the most well designed chalet, with the bed looking out at the view and the bathroom spacious and well designed to fit into the lodge so it flowed into the room.

Liked the little extras like the shampoo and conditioner etc. Nice eating area and pool area (although the pool could have done with a clean).

My only negative comment about this place is it is a bit too over welcoming on arrival with all the questions as to what our plans were for the next day. The guy seemed like a persistent salesman who why slyly trying to get us onto one of his trips without us realising it. They should just give people a run down of the trips they offer and how much they cost, perhaps in a pack on arrival. Then you can mull over it and speak later if there is anything of interest to you. It's a bit full on to have someone meet you at you car as soon as you pull up hot and bothered from a long drive. At that stage you just want a cool drink and the key to your room for a rest.

Food was nice, but we did get a very minor stomach bug after staying here."

"I knew that we had a family room booked by Expert Africa as the hotel was full when they had booked so was expecting a larger room when we arrived, but the room we ended up with was amazing!!! The room at this place was absolutely fantastic, we felt like we had won the lottery. It had 2 floors, 2 fantastic bathrooms and 2 balconies, also a lovely little kitchen area. Spotlessly clean with all the extras we needed, like a kettle and bits in the kitchen.

We really enjoyed staying here because of the room and didn't want to leave. It was really nice to be so close to the beach but the downside was that it was quite far from town if you did want to go out to a retaurant to eat. Had the room not been so lovely this would have been a let down, but as it was we stayed in and cooked for ourselves!! Breakfast was also good and they even cleaned the car for me."

"The chalet here was of outstanding quality, the sort of luxury we don't normally experience as a couple on holiday, what a treat! I adored the outside shower and thought that was a brilliant touch of luxury. Food was excellent and really liked the buffet style so that you could pick what you liked in the main meal and the staff brought you your starter and desert.

This place was 5 star to us. The service was impeccable with exceptionally well trained staff, almost scarily efficient when you are used to the standard of service in the UK!! The trip to see the elephants we felt was quite expensive but to see them so close up and as we were the only 2 on the trip it gave us such a lovely amount of time to spend just watching them."

"This was probably my least favourite place on the whole trip, although the standard of accommodation and service on the trip was incredibly high so even been the least favourite still meant the standard was reasonably good.

The chalet was fitted out well, but somehow it seemed dingy and a bit unwelcoming and the whole area had more of a feeling of suburbia than restcamp. There was a fridge which was good and a kettle to make tea, but they provide you with the grand total of 2 teabags so you can't overindulge yourselves...

The service at the reception was perfunctory at best and even the guys at the petrol station were fairly miserable which is pretty rare in Namibia. The food was pretty dreadful and overpriced in my opinion. The second night we skipped dinner and ate a snack from the snack bar instead, but the quality of the food from there was pretty dubious, but at least it was cheaper.

Having read the Bradt guidebook I thought that the office would provide some useful information on where the best viewing spots for wildlife were but there was nothing much there, just some out of date information on roads and a few spottings written down by other tourists. I did ask someone for some advise and he recommended a route which when we arrived at Andreson gate to turn onto turned out to be blocked off and shut which was a bit annoying as it was getting late on in the day and we could have done without having to drive all the was there to find a blocked off road. It would be good to have had more information at the office to advise people on wildlife viewing, particularly as it was rainy season and viewing is not as simple as just rocking up to a water hole and sitting back - nothing needed to go to the water hole as there was water everywhere!!"

"This place was a lot better than the previous Etosha restcamp. I thought the room was much better and more attractive. The layout was better, it was much lighter and brighter. The food here was also an improvement and marginally cheaper so we ate at the restaurant both nights.

The service at the front desk was better than the previous etosha restcamp but it was not particulary good and there seemed to be a few unhappy guests queing up to complain about something in their room. The pool area was good here but with only about 5 sunloungers around a very large pool, you had to lie on the hard concrete to relax."

"This was a nice stop en route back to Windhoek. The room was nice enough, a little dated, but clean and tidy. The food was very good but I thought that the cost of drinks was incredibly expensive compared with every other place we had stayed. I thought they had charged me for a bottle of wine rather than a glass.

It seems strange that all the lodges charge roughly the same prices for beer/wine etc and then this lodge really ups the prices - it was a bit of a shock. Service was excellent and the drive was very informative."

"As before, I think this accommodation was excellent."