Travel reviews by Mrs D from Maryland

"The Garden Lodge was a lovely introduction to Botswana and viewing the animals. It was very comfortable and exceeded my expectations in terms of amenities.

The owners and the staff were uniformly helpful and very welcoming. They accommodated the need for vegetarian meals without making any sort of fuss at all. The only thing that surprised us was the number of German-speaking guests. We learned that they focused on that population because Gabi, one of the owners, is from Germany. It gave us an unique experience since many of them also spoke English.

We also enjoyed John, who was our guide in the game drives on the river trips. He seemed to know quite a lot about the animals and the environment. We particularly enjoyed learning about traditional uses of some of the plants."

"This was my favorite of the three places we stayed in Botswana. Our guide and tracker (Bate (not sure of spelling) and Justice) were incredible. Not only were they able to find all the animals we were specially interested in seeing, but they could spot and identify every bird we passed and talk about their habitat and behavior. We saw an amazing number of animals and birds - everything we had hoped for and more. Bate spent time with us beyond the animal drives and boat trips so we developed a good relationship.

The camp itself was excellent. All the staff warm and welcoming. The tent was very attractive and comfortable with many amenities that I didn't expect. The food was very good (too good!) and they readily accommodated the needs of a vegetarian. We definitely felt well cared for. The size of the camp and number of visitors were both perfect. It was large enough so that we felt we had some privacy, but small enough that we had good interactions with the staff and other visitors."

"This experience was moderately good. Our guide was not at the same level as the guides we had in other locations. I was a bit disappointed that we did not get to see the same number and variety of animals that we saw in other places. However, we did see lions and a leopard, which we had not seen previously, so that was really wonderful. Our guide was not the one to locate these animals, but was able to take us to see them when other guides located them. We did quite a lot of driving with limited observation of much beyond elephants. He also did not every try to identify any of the birds we were seeing.

The camp itself was very luxurious. It was larger than any of the other places we stayed with more guests and staff. With that many people it was difficult to develop relationships. The camp staff might have been able to help by introducing the visitors to each other. In addition, I did not know what most of the staff did. We were not introduced to most of the them.

It was very exciting to see all the baboons that ranged the camp, including the one that came into our bathroom and played with and stole one of the towels. We also had other animals come through the camp including a hippo hiding in the bushes one evening. And we could hear the hippos and other animals during the night, which was very exciting."