Travel reviews by Mr & Mrs H from Hammersmth

"The staff were extremely friendly and very helpful. The food was great and it is a beautiful place to stay: very luxurious and comfortable rooms, and the fact that they are open to the elements is fantastic!

Other than the guided tour to the Victoria Falls, the other tours which are included in the cost of the stay are not all really worth it. We weren't able to go to the Livingstone Museum as there was some sort of demonstration in town (described as a riot!) and so we missed out on what, by all accounts, is an excellent museum.

However, these are minor concerns: the whole place is very relaxing and it was a good place to start our holiday."

"We had a wonderful time at Kaingo. Our guide (Patrick) was delightful, friendly and extremely knowledgeable. Nothing was too much trouble and the staff in general were always charming and friendly. The chef went to all sorts of trouble to provide me with gluten free alternatives to bread, cakes and biscuits (I really couldn't eat it all - but it was delicious).

The game on view was stunning - we saw everything that we had hoped to see, plus a lot of other fascinating and wonderful things."

"We stayed at a makeshift camp beside a lagoon - it was not the permanent platform at Mwamba. I suspect we had a more interesting time at this location, although we didn't have the views which we might have had from the platform.

We felt (fairly) safe even when woken at 2am because we were surrounded by nine lions! What an amazing experience!

We loved being, quite literally, under the stars. The braii was wonderful (I don't know how they coped at Kaingo as we had the chef with us!) and the bush loo was wonderful!"

"The location and layout of the camp and the rooms was fantastic at Tafika. The fact that the rooms were spacious and somewhat "open to the elements" made the experience of being in an open camp really exciting - it was great lying in bed listening to the wild animals just outside!

The guides were again highly knowledgeable and very friendly. The game drives were fantastic in terms of the game seen - everything we could have wished for.

The only problem were the vehicles, which are old and a lot less comfortable that those at Kaingo. I found them very uncomfortable: the seating caused me back pain because of the placing of the seatback. I managed to improve the situation by using several folded blankets to raise me up. This is why I gave Facilitiies an "average" score - not sure whether vehicles are counted as facilities."

"This was the perfect place to end our fairly busy holiday - it was possible to choose how much activity and how much relaxing you wanted to do. The facilities are excellent for watersports, and the place is very comfortable and very friendly. It is lovely that the owners spend so much time socialising with the guests and we loved the fact that the guests were all encouraged and enabled to spend time together, so it was a very sociable place to stay.

We highly recommend the sunset cruise on the sailboat - Howard can literally "whistle up" the fish eagles: an amazing experience. I learned to water ski in the most straightforward (and very successful) way, which was an unexpected bonus for me.

The food was very good, a lot more than adequate, but not quite as good as we had experienced in other places. One piece of advice is to be careful how much you choose to drink as it is easy to rack up a rather large bill even for soft drinks (including water). However, I appreciate that the b&b cost is kept down by making the drinks more expensive, and of course the fancy drinks are optional.

Overall, we loved it!"