Travel reviews by Mr & Mrs G from Carshalton

"Clean, simple, small hotel. Cold buffet breakfast poor.

Need superior room for air-conditioning itself provided by noisy freestanding unit vented to outside. Evening meal good value for price."

"Very attractive setting, lodge delightful with good views and good walks, well documented by Robert and Marianne and cairned by Neil.

Robert and Marianne very enthusiastic and helpful, food very adequate and good quality. Pool tiny and uninviting, unfortunately no fridge."

"A superb lodge. Very new, huge room with excellent facilities, including large fridge. Excellent food and service. Ask for a higher numbered chalet near to waterhole - ours (number 3) was remote from that view.

Lodge was less than half full so it is to be hoped that service levels can be maintained when it is full. Chalets are nicley arranged for reasonably good privacy. Pre-dawn (because lodge is inside park) trip to Sossuvlei well worth while but you need a good fleece as well as supplied warm poncho - it is COLD!"

"Only reason for staying here is Sam with his superb hospitality and knowledge of good food and wine which you can buy by the glass very reasonably. He even booked a fish restaurant for us on arrival as that day's menu did not suit us. He also confirmed our tour for the next day.

Room was small and had no fridge although our freeze packs were frozen for us. The guest house is 15 minutes' walk from the town.

Day trip to Sandwich Harbour - An excellent day with our guide, Ernst, driving over and climbing up the dunes, experiencing different shapes and colours of the sand. We saw very little wildlife, principally birds on the guano platform off the coast north of Walvis Bay, pelicans in Sandwich harbour and numerous desert insects.

Ernst is passionate about wildlife and conservation and shared his enthusiasm and knowledge with us in a most enjoyable and long day. Thanks to tide times and his passion to show us all that he could we were back at 7pm instead of the planned 5:30!"

"Huge room with large shaded deck with private outside shower as well as good normal inside facilities. Food, buffet style, good and plentiful. Good, long narrow pool. Staff cheerful and friendly - they sang to us at dinner.

Our guide, Elaine, for the Desert Elephant excursion was very knowledgeable although, at N$550, we thought it was expensive. The morning excursion to Twyfelfontein, Organ Pipes, Burnt Mountain and Petrified Forest (at N$960) is outrageously priced and easy to do yourself - which we did at a minute fraction of the cost.

Best to see Burnt Mountain early or towards sunset. Check your extras bill!"

"Very busy and seemed full but this did not detract from the experience. Camp is newly renovated and our waterhole chalet was very comfortable, well equipped and in a good position. However the room appeared cramped.

The waterhole, while not visible from the room, was close enough to carry your drink and provided day-long interest in late October. ON arrival we immediately saw springbok, zebra, giraffe, black-faced impala and jackal. It is also well lit at night with sodium lamps (set the white balance on your camera manually!) when we saw black and white rhino and elephant.

It is a very good base for visiting the best waterholes at the West end or Etosha. Gemsbokvlakte was really good where we saw a pride of lions holding the water while large herds of springbok, oryx and zebra waited to drink. Nearby a small pride of lionesses were sitting in the shade by the road. There were also plenty of birds, notably the Kori Bustard, red crested korhaan and giant eagle owl.

Unfortunately the service was very poor at reception and in the dining room but this did not spoil the lodge for us. Food was good buffet style and plentiful but must be paid for on the spot (cash or cards) and cannot be charged to your room.

Pools complex looked very good but we did not have time to use it!"

"Much better service than Okaukuejo with very friendly and helpful staff throughout. Not as busy and therefore more relaxed. Chalet was HUGE with two double rooms and a lounge/kitchen area plus covered barbecue facility. Restaurant - starters and dessert very good but mains rather limited in quantity after our previous experiences.

Waterhole small, poorly lit cramped viewing area and 15 minutes' walk from chalets - many used their cars. Visitors limited to rhino, elephant and jackal. Outside the camp we saw lots of red hartebeeste, giraffe, elephant, impala, springbok, oryx, wildebeeste, warthogs, a dik-dik but missed the leopard near Namutoni!

Large swimming pool. Dim lighting in the room.

We did more driving in this area but it had the bonus of small antelopes - steenbok and dik-dik."

"Wonderful location, very well equipped tents. Brian and Adele were excellent hosts - lovely atmosphere, good choice of varied walks and excursions with guides. Good more adventurous food. A late breakfast after your early walk, served as brunch - afternoon tea also included.

Small waterhole visible from restaurant - lots of birds and small animals on site. Small but delightful pool."

"The management of this lodge is very poor. On arrival the manager seemed disinterested and stiff. The relief manager (PJ) who arrived the next day was an improvement. We lost part of our evening game drives on two evenings, the second being 2/3rds of the drive's time, because of late arrivals. This is acceptable on the first day but the result of unacceptably bad organisation of guest groupings when it recurs a second time.

Jacob was an excellent guide whose efforts were badly let down by this bad organisation.

During the 3 days we saw impala, tsetsebe, reedbuck, red lechwe, sable antelope, warthog, jackal, hyena, a lion, hippo, a large 70 strong herd of elephant, buffalo and numerous birds. The highlight was tracking a cheetah searching for and calling for his brothers to his reunion with one.

On our third evening our trip to the heronry was marred by a violent and overhead thunderstorm with heavy hail causing hippos and elephant to be very nervous. We question whether we should have been on the water in those conditions, though Jacob handled the situation very well, reading and responding to the intentions of the animals accurately"

"A well organised camp under careful management. The pace her is more gentle than at Kwara, physical comfort being more important (early morning tea served at the tent, rather than rushing out on a dawn game drive). Activities were well organised but the amount of game seemed limited and more nervous.

The mokuro trip was good, as was the boat ride to the heronry. We saw a very large number of birds, a small pride of lionesses and two wild dogs as well as giraffe, jackal, hippo and various antelope. On a walk we saw (from a very safe distance!) a crocodile.

Most of the guests were American. The camp is to be upgraded to be even more luxurious from 3 to 5 star, in our view unnecessarily. When our safari truck broke down a replacement was with us extremely quickly."

"BD and Rundi, our tracker and guide, were very good but as we and two others were the only guests for two of our days there was only one vehicle operating and this made finding game extremely difficult for them. We were lucky on the first evening to track 7 lions to a buffalo kill. Also we found 3 cheetah and followed them to an impala kill. Apart from that the viewing was mainly birds with a few antelope, giraffe and elephant. Or are we getting blase?

As we were packing on the last afternoon a curious elephant decided to (too) closely investigate out tent causing some damage to the shading framework. The staff were quickly on the spot."