Travel reviews by Mr W & Miss H from London

"Nice welcoming place to spend our first night"

"Balloon ride over the dunes was amazing - highly recommended.

The dune drive with the walk to Deadvlei was also brilliant, and our guide Willem was very knowledgeable. We also enjoyed a walk by ourselves along the dry riverbed by the lodge.

The trip to Sesriem Canyon was pleasant but no more than you could do if you drove yourself on the way past.

The view over the dunes from the room was spectacular, and the corn crickets made novel companions to watch it with! Meals were nice, with extremely large portions. The staff were friendly, and we particularly enjoyed the singing and dancing one evening."

"Reasonably priced accommodation, lots of information available from Sam, good internet availability.

We did the sea kayaking trip to the seal colony with Jeanne, which was brilliant!
Jeanne picked us up in town and was lovely. She was very friendly and chatty, very knowledgeable about the wildllife around town, and took some great pictures of us kayaking with seals and dolphins which she emailled us later.

The seals were very inquisitive and playful - they raced us in the kayak and when they got bored of this they cooled us down by splasing us - and bizarrely sounded like sheep!

This was definitely a highlight of our trip and something we would recommend to anyone going to the Swakopmund area!"

"Lovely room, though hot even with the floor-standing fan. The outside bathroom was great. Fantastic views.

Very nice plunge pool.

Extremely attentive, efficient staff - we particularly enjoyed the sundowners at the top of the hill.

We were lucky enough to see a big group of desert elephants up close. The guide was very friendly and knowledgeable.

The rock painting trip was quite interesting but a bit rushed, though it was raining at the time. Entertainment again provided by the Italian coach party we met at Kulala.

The drive from the coast to Damaraland via Uis was beautiful. Another group we met had gone up the skeleton coast and the C39, which was apparently spectacular."

"We had a Bush view room. This had a great view of the bush (and lightening storms) behind main camp with various antelope and small animals all making an appearance, The room itself had a huge window to make the most of the view and was very comfortably and stylishly appointed. This was our favourite accomodation!

The activities offered by Okonjima - especially the Leopard and Cheetah tracking - were awesome and it was amazing being able to see these beautiful cats at such close range. The staff were really flexible on the activities offered - we did the leopard tracking twice. We also discovered that the managment know their first aid - following an encounter with wasps halting the hyena tracking.

The staff were great and gave us a complimentary bottle of fizz on our first night for our honeymoon."

"The camp itself was good - if a little dated/tired - but the reason everyone comes is the wildlife rather than the accomodation. We were a little unlucky with the late rainy meaning no animals came to the camp waterhole the entire time of our stay (3 nights) - this meant we did a fair bit of driving around the park - which was just as much fun and we still saw pretty much everything we wanted - Lions, Leopards, etc.

We definitely recommend doing the camp's night drive (about £30pp), the guide was a great driver, very knowledgeable, had some good chat, and had phenomenal eyesight.

The food at the camp restaurant was standard buffet fare - early arrival recommended for frozen ice cream - but on Tues and Thurs a local school choir performs and they are brilliant!"

"Good location for quick, easy access to the East side of Etosha - although it needs better signage outside from the road. The tents were great and had everything you could possibly want!

The staff were eager to please but were a bit overwhelmed when the camp was busy - meaning some long waits at meal times. That said, the staff were very good with children and it would be a good place to go if you are a family with kids."

"This was an after-thought on our trip to break the distance between Etosha and Windhoek, which was a shame as this was a really nice place where we could have happily spent more time!

The staff were very welcoming and had specially decorated our room and dining table for us (we were on honeymoon). The rooms were good.

The attached reserve has some impressive rhino, including a cute baby white rhino, and non-native species - the black wilderbeest were particularly amusing.

A special mention should go to the poor member of staff who cleaned our impressively dirty car (courtesy of muddy Etosha roads) and left it gleaming!"

"We'd saved this as a pampering stop at the end of our holiday. Sadly our plans went awry when unseasonally late rains on the day of our arrival meant a flash river cut off Gocheganas from the roads - preventing our early arrival

The staff at Wilderness Safaris and Gocheganas were very helpful (Wilderness let us park their car overnight in their compound, whilst Gocheganas came and got us in an ex-military amphibous truck when big 4x4s could cross the river).

When we finally got to the Lodge, the staff were welcoming and the rooms and facilities were amazing!!! We didn't get to indulge in any pampering but it looked to be popular and worth treating yourself.

There looked to be plenty of wildlife - we could see giraffes on the hills from our room and an oryx was contentedly munching the flowers by our front door - and the scenery was amazing with great panoramic views."