Travel reviews by Mr O from US

"Lodges were beautiful with a great view of the red dunes. The dining was excellent, the staff was friendly and professional. We enjoyed sleeping on the roof at night.

We enjoyed an early morning guided tour into the park, entering through Kulala's private entrance. However, we would have benefited from driving into the park ourselves and staying a liitle longer to climb the dunes.

Overall, great experience."

"This was a great little hotel. The staff was friendly, we had a parking garage to store the car and we very close to the Swakopmund center."

"Rooms were beautiful with a great view of the desert. Dinner buffet was not up to par - the meat was tough and the fish was dry.

However, the staff was very helpful - we had a flat tire the morning of our departure and they were more than happy to help us replace it and to fix the original tire in case we needed another spare."

"The main lodge was nice, however, the rooms were extremely run down, small, not air conditioned as advertised and dirty. The service was also sub-par. We ordered two drinks from the bar and the bartender charged us for a double - he argued with us and insisted that we ordered doubles... he finally backed down after we declined to pay for the double drinks.

On the morning of our departure, one of the cooks asked us for a ride into the next next town while we were ordering our eggs. We had never met this cook before and felt that his request to guests was inappropriated. We suggest that Twyfeltfontein ask their staff not to make such requests to their guests."

"We enjoyed our stay a Okakeujo. The rooms were small, but clean and comfortable. However, we most of our time was spent outside the room either on game drives or at the waterhole. Okaukeujo has the best waterhole of the three camps. We enjoyed staying up late watching a family of black rhinos.

The staff was not especially friendly or helpful. The restaurant service was below average. The dinner buffet was average and overpriced. The staff did not inform us that we had the option of only eating from the salad bad for 1/2 the price (which we would have preffered to do anyway).

Despite the negatives, Okaukeujo was our favorite rest camp in the park because of the waterhole."

"Like Okaukeujo, the rooms were small, clean, and comfortable. We enjoyed the waterhole at this camp as well, where we saw many elephants.

Service in the dining room was a little better than at Okaukeujo."

"The rooms were spacious and very nice. Namutoni has the nicest rooms of all three rest camps. However, the waterholes there are not very good - they are small and there are not many animals. We enjoyed siiting by the waterholes in the evening at both Okaukeujo and Halali, however, it was not worthwhile to do so at Halali.

We ate at the African restaurant in the camp - the food was delicious and we were happy to eat authentic African food and chat with the cook."

"The rooms were rustic, charming, and well decorated. Please note that Chris Brandt's book states that this lodge has AC and hairdryers - this is not the case.

We enjoyed a trail walk on the property and ran into a group of elands.

The local staff was friendly and chatting with them in the evening made our experience more pleasurable."

"We enjoyed our experience at Ndhovu mostly because we spent a lot of time with the owner's friends (Gary and Christine) who were filling in for him while he was away. Either Gary and/or Christine joined us for our activities. They were very flexible with scheduling the activities and tayloring them to our prefferences.

The lodges are on the edge of the Kavango river, where you can observe hippos, crocodiles, and watch beautiful sunsets and sunrises. The only complaint we have about the room is that the mosquito net is insufficient - it's not big enough for the bed and we had to sleep outside the net, which is not ideal, since this was a malarial area.

The food was very good. However, we suggest that the owners take some precautions to deter moths. We spent most of our dinner protecting our food against moths."

"This was a very nice lodge - the rooms were very nice, the staff was friendly and professional.

The activities were well run and the staff strived to ensure guests' enjoyment.

Our only negatitive is that we felt the day to be too structured for our tastes (although other guests may enjoy this aspect). We didn't have much autonomy to do anything on our own. Activities, breakfast, lunch, and dinner were at precise time everyday, with not much freedom to do anything else."

"This lodge in Zambia was repsonsible for obtaining our Visa waiver at the Namibia/ Zambia border. However, they did not do this on time and we had to pay $125 at the border. When we arrived at the lodge, they requested that we pay them for the visa waiver (which did not go through). We explained the situation to them, however, they again asked us for payment for the waiver upon our departure! After explaining to them again that the visa requirement had not been waived, the manager apologized but did not proceed to compensate us for their mistake.

The lodges were spacious and clean. However, the mosquito nets were inadequate - they did not cover the entire bed and mosquitoes entered the net during the night.

The lodge was several kilometers away from downtown. The lodge had an agreement with a few driver to transport guests downtown for the day - the charge for this was $20 USD round trip - which is SIGNIFICANTLY higher than the local rate of about $8 USD round trip. We felt that is was unfair that overcharge guests by such a large margin for transportation downtown and that the lodge should negatiate a better rate for their guests. The staff refused to give us a better rate and we were forced to pay this amount to leave the lodge."