Travel reviews by Mr & Mrs T from Victoria

"Pionee.rr is out in the middle of nowhere and you don't get to see Lusaka is you stay here for a night. The tap water wasn't drinkable and they charged for bottled water.

On the positive side we felt safe there."

"Well organised camp and great staff. You would expect this for the price.

The included balloon flight was a do-not-miss activity"

"Great location and you would stay there for that reason alone.

The rooms were very very ordinary. As we checked out we asked why there was a space for a bar fridge but one wasn't provided .. and they said that if we had requested one they would have delivered one straight away!

Don't miss sundowners drinks of the riverfront deck at the Royal Livingstone next door (10min walk)"

"We thought because it was on a river that there would be water activities eg canoeing. But in reality the river is largely dried up at this time of the year, Also because there are now no bridges/pontoons across the river the vehicle activities were restricted to the teensy bit of NP that is on the south side of the river and that became a bit repetitive as we constantly revisited the same ground.

The 'walking' activities were on the north side o fthe river (canoes to get across) and we enjoyed those trips.
In hindsight we should have chosen a camp on a 'full' river eg: Lower Zambezi NP.

There was a microlite flight available and you had to pay extra which we thought was a bit rich given the nightly tariff.
Rooms were nice but had no power and therefore no fan, & therefore in the middle of the day between drives/walks you just had to lie on your bed with a wet towel over you and suffer! (since there was rarely any breeze and at that time of the year it was very hot ay midday.

They own/lease there own light aircraft which proved handy as at the end of our stay they flew us over the NP to Mpika (organised via Expert Afrika .. thanks great suggestion)

Staff were excellent."

"We were expecting low-grade train facilities and they were worse than we expected... lucky we were prepared. We caught the train about 6hrs into its journey as it passed through Mpika.

- Pre-booking the tickets was a long complicated email procedure but we finally got confirmation from a railway staff members personal hotmail address. When we turned up at Mpika about 6hr before the train was expected they knew nothing about our booking. But something must have been allocated becuase we were subsequently told that all the first class sleepers were sold out so our reservation must have been registered somewhere!

- 'First Class' means absolutely nothing other than the fact that the '4 berth sleepers' were designated first class.

- The sleeper: Sheets & blankets are provided. The 'advertised' bottle of water and roll of toilet paper paper per person was not provided (to any of the sleepers). Both our security window and glass window would not stay up so the carriage attendant finally got off the train at one of the stops and got us a 'stick' so we could jam these open. Apparently most of the sleepers have 'sticks' to keep the windows open. None of the electrical outlets or lights worked except for a single dingy globe in the ceiling.

- The carriage facilities - The Toilet: The toilet had pressurised water for flushing but the pipe wasn't properly connected to the toilet so when you flushed the water ran onto the floor rather than into the bowl. Rather than fix the problem they had cleverly drilled a hole in the floor so the water ran onto the track. All water stopped anyway about 12hr into the trip. They had provided a bucket of water in the toilet room and a cut-off plastic bottle to scoop up water & try to flush. Then the train attendant locket the toilet room at some stage because 'people are making it dirty'; and she would unlock it if you pleaded that you really needed to use it. The train attendant got some toilet paper off us when she needed to go because she didn't even bring her own ... what the! We had been forewarned about the toilet facilities & brought along a couple of rolls of toilet paper & large plastic bags in case we needed to do our business in the sleeper itself ... lucky it didn't get to that. But you would only have to have a case of gastro and a locked toilet to be in a nasty situation!! Sounds gross but better to be prepared.

- The carriage facilities - Bathroom/Shower. The 'bathroom' room had two sinks but all taps were completely missing so it was on no use whatever! The shower was a separate room with a shower pipe but no rose. The water was cold but at least we used that initially to fill empty water bottles and go back to our sleeper for a bird-bath. The when all running water ceased at the 12hr mark we had to use our bottles of drinking water for any cleaning requirements.

- The meals: A giuy would come around before each mealtime, tell you your choices and then deliver same to your sleep. The meals were quite reasonable and seemed hygenic (well how can you really tell). We didn't have any tummy problems form the train food. We brought along some 'emergency' food and probably about 15 litres of bottled water. At each train stop there were dozens of hawkers selling food from the track directly thru your window. Most of them concentrated on the normal 'seated' carriages but you could get some food off some of them as they walked up to those carriages. There was a mixture of deep-fried looking food & fruit/vegetables. We are normally pretty adventurous re food but given the train facilities we didn't want to risk gastra so stuck to buying fruit with a skin .. bananas, coconuts etc

- The scenery. I normaly enjoy a train trip but to be honest i don't think the scenery was anything special on this trip. The most interesting part were the hawkers when we stopped at each station. Even going thru Selous was average (saw a few elephants/Zebras).

My wifes comment was 'I survived'."

"Just a normal hotel with facilities you would normally expect. Just fine as a transit hotel (which in our case was our 'contingency' time in case the train was significantly delayed)"

"Most people i suspect choose a hotel on the waterfront whereas Zanzibar Coffee House is about 200m inland amongst the maze of laneways in Old Stone Town.

We had a suite which was nice as that meant we had aircon which was nice given how muggy Stone Town got the minute you walked away from the seafront"

"Nice location only about 20min boat ride from Old Stone Town so a few guests were using Chapwani as their base and went to Zanzibar each day for various day trips and then back to Chapwani for the beaches/breeze/swimming. Everything about Chapwani is clean neat & tidy and minimalist. As long as you are clearly aware of the minimalist nature of this resort then I think it's a great place to chill out.

No aircon, minimal power, fixed-menu etc. But the beaches & enormous salt-water pool (for when the tide is out) were terrific. They had snorkelling gear & sit-on-kayaks avail for free which was good. Don't go there (or most of Zanzibar for that matter) for the snorkelling as most of it has been destroyed by overfishing & anchor dragging.

They have armed guards patrolling the Island at night but I still had a pair of reef sandals stolen from our veranda.

The one thing I didn't like was that the accommodation is a number of 'huts' each with two self-contained rooms side-by-side. So if you were sitting on your veranda you could literally be 5 feet away from your neighbours on their veranda."