Reviews of Safarihoek Lodge

"Beautiful lodge with an amazing view over the valley and the waterhole

A little bit out of the way, with only access to its own private reserve where (at least during our stay) there was only limited wildlife sightings" See all these reviews: 22n in Namibia; 3n in Botswana

"At first I found the architecture rather dated but in the evenings they made a bif effort with lighting etc and it looked lovely.

My guide was excellent and we saw many animals.

Food very average though !

Staff were excellent." See all these reviews: 14n in Namibia

"Fantastic stay in all respects. The facilities are very well appointed, the staff are knowledgeable and well trained and the reserve is outstanding.

We enjoyed the very comfortable room with the fantastic view and outdoor shower.

The food was delicious. We did think there could be better cold options at breakfast as some items weren't of the quality expected. In addition, it also felt at time as if the staff were constantly following us, for example up to the breakfast and afternoon tea buffet, to the point it felt uncomfortable serving ourselves.

The drives were very high quality, personalized, we saw a lot of animals and learned an immense amount from our guide Sydney." See all these reviews: 20n in Namibia

"Fabulous! The outlook from the venue over the waterhole was great from the bar area and our room.

Staff were great, friendly , helpful and relaxed. We had a personal guide for 3 drives which meant that each time we had a focus on something new.

His knowledge was excellent and he ensured we had a memorable time. Gluten free options were very good" See all these reviews: 17n in Namibia

"Good rooms with a nice view out over the reserve. Could view a waterhole through binoculars from the balcony.

Went out on 3 drives over a day and a half with a very knowledgable guide. Saw alot of general game, a couple of black rhino but the highlight was a group of 7 lions which we were able to follow for a while.

Because you are on a private reserve with a guide driving, you could leave the road and get closer to the wildlife than at Etosha." See all these reviews: 12n in Namibia

"this was the pinnacle of the trip. great setting and views. good food and friendly staff.

michael the guide found so much stuff and cocktails at sunset on the plains was lovely followed but a drive home under the stars.

definite must for anyone." See all these reviews: 15n in Namibia

"An amazing experience. This is like Etosha, but private, so you have much more freedom.

We were tracking elephant, rhino and lion and finding plenty of them all with our guide Mike, (who was great). Etosha heights shares a 75km border with etosha, where the fence is open in many places. This has allowed the game to migrate into the private reserve and they are now here in large numbers.

We had a great time here and saw masses of animals, (including 14 rhino in 2 days), and would even recommend that if you are limiting your number of safari days, that you come here over Etosha itself." See all these reviews: 21n in Namibia

"Very nice welcome by 2 members of staff. We went out on the afternoon game drive which was very good and saw lots of different animals with our guide Mumsy who was very nice and certainly went out of her way to find the animals for us.

After the drive she drove us to the hide overlooking the waterhole for a surprise BBQ dinner along with the other guests. This was was nice but very cramped with hardly any space between each guest sitting in a long table.

We had a further 2 game drives the following day which although good we didn't see nearly as much as we did on our first drive so a bit hit and miss. Although we did see a spitting Zebra Cobra with head up which Mumsy said was a rare sighting and has requested from us the excellent photo my husband managed to capture of it!

We didn't see the member of staff that greeted us so warmly upon our arrival again and have to say some of the staff that were on duty the 2nd day and indeed breakfast on our last morning (terrible service) were not so friendly" See all these reviews: 21n in Namibia

"A quite mainstream experience as high end lodges in Namibia go. Excellent comfort, very good food prepared by an engaging and welcoming chef, competent and friendly guiding (Teek) and a relaxed atmosphere in a very nice location. The wildlife experiences were pretty good but not outstanding (luck plays a part in this of course). Nothing to fault but nothing truly exceptional. The lodge is on a private reserve and we struggled to understand quite how it is organised and the relationship with Etosha which it neighbours and shares a very porous fence. We believe game hunting has stopped here but we drove past a few very imposing private lodges in the reserve and wondered what they are used for?" See all these reviews: 16n in Namibia

"The positives:

Safarihoek Lodge is absolutely beautiful. The lounge and dining area are very comfortable, clean, well designed and contemporary. There is always a little snack and drink station set up with cookies, dried fruit, marshmallows. The staff in the lodge itself were outstanding–they were so welcoming to us and our son, always available to make a coffee or help with questions. The food was very good at every meal and the chef was especially wonderful–coming out to chat with me to plan meals for my vegetarian son and myself and offering to make custom options. This was very special to us. They even had a beautiful high chair with animals painted on it for our son set up at our table. We very much enjoyed our meals and all of our time spent hanging out in the lodge area.

The family chalet was enormous and well appointed. The beds were very comfortable and balcony was amazing with a sweeping view of Etosha Heights. The only things I would ask the lodge to improve on is better toiletries for guests (shampoo, conditioner, etc) as well as a shelf to put things in the shower. Also, for having these enormous balconies, the furniture on the balcony from which to enjoy the view was very limited- only two very basic chairs. But again, we were very happy with our chalet and these are just areas of opportunity. They also had a wonderful set up for our son, and put a beautiful crib next to our bed with mosquito netting going around it, and a soft little children's blanket.

The photography hide was outstanding–the nicest, best-appointed one I have been to. It has two stories- one with higher up view where you could enjoy the fresh air and scope out what wildlife might be approaching, and the lower level perfect for those ground-level perspective shots for photography. It even had two bathrooms and charging areas/plugs, and bed-type lounge areas. Really a very comfortable place to spend time. We had some nice Hartebeest sightings from the hide.

The very large negative: I will caveat this by saying I think we would have had a very different experience if we were assigned any of the other guides at Safarihoek - the others came up and introduced themselves in the lodge, joked around with our toddler, and were so engaging and eager to converse with us. What we experienced with our guide, however, was probably our worst guiding experience ever. I have never been on any drive in which I had so few opportunities to take photographs, despite his introductory speech that stressed that he knew we were photographers and would be happy to take requests and adjust to our views and help us get great photos. We spent our entire first night's drive going very fast around the property, with little care taken for extreme bumpy roads with our 2 year old son in the vehicle.

He finally had a call from a different vehicle and we had an incredible lion sighting with cubs–we sat and watched them for a long while and got some great shots. That was our only quality opportunity for photographs despite going on three drives with him. After that first experience, I made sure to be very specific in the morning that we would like him to stop anytime he sees running animals of any species as we would like to photograph them. We passed by multiple antelope species and wildebeest in what would have been gorgeous shots, but he still did not stop. Once, hartebeest were running right in front of our vehicle in this incredible scene and he was not going to stop on his own. My husband had to say "can you stop" loudly about 4-5 times before he finally stopped completely and we missed the shots.

The other several times I had to ask him to please stop for us, he did not do some basic things guides everywhere else would do–he never turned off the vehicle to eliminate shake. He would be very slow to respond to requests to stop. He also left several times while I was still shooting and would never ask if we were ready or done. He also completely missed any opportunity to try to engage with our toddler. We gave several opportunities that most good guides would have capitalized on–telling him that our son was curious about which animal's poop that was, and he answered the question once for him, but despite us talking about it and enanging our son in that vein, the guide never again mentioned it or told our son what it was. (For comparison sake–at the Frans Indongo lodge, immediately upon hearing us make this comment- the guide jumped out of the vehicle, grabbed a rhino poop and brought it to show my son and explain how he could tell it was white rhino poop). He also skipped doing sundowner drinks with us both drives and never commented on it or explained why. Again-the other guides we met in the lodge seemed so friendly and engaging,

I think we just had truly terrible luck which left us with a very bad experience. I was so sad to leave this beautiful place with hardly any photos from our drives." See all these reviews: 9n in Namibia