Travel reviews by E & H from Canada

"We stayed at the Weinberg at the start of our 2-week drive around Namibia. We had two nights here.

It's a nice place to arrive at the start of the trip, and to get situated before embarking. There's a couple nice restaurants, one across the street and the other on-site.

The Butcher Block is not actually affiliated with the hotel, so make sure you take some form of payment (we tried to charge to the room and then had to go back to get a credit card, lol). The breakfast was excellent, including the option of eggs benedict!

We had our rental car already, and so just drove into town to tourist on our own. The hotel does try to sell a tour of the city which is rather pricy imo. If you're coming through Expert Africa you're likely an independent enough traveler that you don't need a fully-organized trip.

Overall we really liked the Weinberg. We stayed a different hotel at the end of the trip, just for variety, however prefered the Weinberg"

"Bagatelle was supposed to be just a transit stop between Windhoek and Sossusvlei, but it's actually quite a nice stop on its own.

We had an exclusive dune chalet, at the top of the dune. There's nice views over the other side of the dune, however at night when it's windy, it gets really dusty coming back after dinner (you'll want to shower after dinner, not before).

We signed up for the evening game drive which was very enjoyable. If you're going counter-clockwise on your driving tour of Namibia, you may not find it as impressive, but we were going clockwise, and it was a nice intro to wildlife.

Dinner was excellent, some of the best grilled game we had on the trip."

"Hoodia was one of our favourite lodges on our trip.

It was low season and we were the only ones here, but it didn't feel empty. You can park right beside your chalet (there's no car covering, my only critique, although that might detract from the overall aesthetics) .

Hoodia is in a beautiful setting, beside the Tsauchab River, which was dry at this time of year. We took a lot of sunset pics.

The chalets were nice. We particularly liked the outside showers (there's both inside and outside).

The night sky was one of the best we had on the trip. There's no light pollution at all.

The lodge organized our trip to Sossusvlei and Deadvlei. We left super-early to get to the gates at the opening. Our driver/guide/lodge person drove us straight to Deadvlei so we were amongst the first people (post gate-opening) to get there. We had a very elaborate lunch picnic after the dunes, which looked like out of a magazine.

It's possible to stay at other lodges inside the park, but we were quite happy with our location outside, it felt much more remote and atmospheric."

"This was a transit stop between Sossusvlei and Swakopmund.

It was hot when we were here (highs around 36C) and the rooms couldn't keep up with the heat. I think in cooler weather, the rooms cool down overnight and don't fully heat up in the day. However when we were here, it was like sleeping in a pizza oven. We had a suite which has better air circulation, I can't imagine how hot it would be in the regular rooms. Other than the temperature, the rooms were quite nice with a nice view over the horizon.

Lunch was great, dinner was okay given how great the lunch was.

If you don't like the heat, my recommendation would be to stop here for lunch and then carry on to Swakopmund. The self-guided treks looked interesting but it was way too hot"

"The Strand was a nice contrast from the lodges we'd been staying at.

It feels like a hub of the city, with beach activities and weddings and everything centered around it. Unfortunately we didn't have any time to explore the city itself.

The restaurants are great -- we had lunch at the Farmhouse Deli, dinner at the Ocean Cellar, both were excellent. The breakfast buffet and hot tables was one of the best breakfasts we've had on this trip.

The front desk was very helpful on arrival in helping us unload our stuff and then showing us to the parking lot.

I'd definitely stay here again on a trip to Namibia"

"We stayed in a Superior View room, this was one of the best views we've had from a room ever. The landscape in Damaraland it pretty cool, and Mowani is built in and amongst giant boulders. It's really stunning.

The food is excellent, although compared to the other lodges we stayed at, the waitstaff was kind of odd, although everyone was very keen.

We went on excursions to the Torra Conservancy to see the desert-adapted elephants (they guaranteed we would see the elephants, and we did :) ). On the drive to the Torra Conservancy, we passed by other lodges roadside, and were glad we booked in at Mowani, the location compared to others is amazing.

We also had an afternoon excursion to see the ancient rock engravings in Twyfelfontein.

The excursions are very well done and organized, we really enjoyed them.

The rooms themselves (at least the Superior View) have a/c -- even though their website says it's fan only. The first night, we just kept the canvas open (it's screened) and the wind kept us very comfortable, however around 4am or so the winds stop and it gets a bit stuffy. The next night we turned on on the a/c which cools down the bed area (but not the whole room) but it's just the bed that is important for sleeping, we slept really well.

The stars are amazing from here.

The sundowner location is one of the best. If you're in Superior Room 1, the balcony is in view of the sundowner folks, which didn't matter to us as we were at the sundowner. However if privacy is a concern, i think Room 2 is better.

Overall this was one of the best locations we stayed at on our trip"

"We were here over Christmas and Family Day (Boxing Day). It was a great place to be for the two days!

Our room had a great view of the watering hole in the distance. It's a bit further away than i had imagined, but that's probably better for the animals.

We liked the mosquito nets -- they are oversized so that the night table is inside the net. We noticed this at a few lodges, maybe it's more standard now, we like it.

We really liked our host / guide / driver, Mamsi. She is a really nice person, and really helped make our stay one of the best. I think at Safarihoek, each group gets a dedicated host, which makes things much easier during the stay, especially when trying to co-ordinate game drives etc.

I really liked the photography hide. The photographer that designed the hide was on-site while we were there. It was great to get insights into taking pics from the hide from her.

The drive here from Damaraland was also really cool, through some very rural / non-toursity areas. We passed through several manual gates, with hand-written signs 'mak toe asb'. We googled and found out this means 'please close the gate', lol.

The food was really good. I liked how the lodge promotes the local cultures; for example, some of the staff speak one of the click languages. They presented the menu options both in english and then the click language. It was cool.

Overall we really enjoyed our stay here! It was quite different in setting and environment from other lodges, as well it's a bit off the main circuit and really feels like you're remote."

"Arriving here we weren't sure if we were at the right place, because there's no signage at the main lodge. We thought maybe we were at the owner's suite or something!

Anyways we sorted it out. The main lodge is really nice, it's like visiting a cottage of a friend of a friend, who's super rich and has nice stuff and it's all there for you to use. The tented chalets are large, with nice mosquito nets (although in some places barely came to the floor, i think they mounted them slightly too high). The outdoor shower is really nice, as it prevents humidity build up in the cabin. The a/c holds up really well, it kept the cabin at a nice temperature for sleeping.

We went for a morning game drive into Etosha. It takes a while (about 45 minutes) before you get to anything worth seeing, so the overall excursion takes longer than if you're in the park itself. This was our only safari in a national park on this trip (the others were private reserves). I had forgotten that in national parks, every sighting results in a dozen vehicles speeding to the sighting. We did see quite a bit, but i found the safaris at the other lodges more enjoyable. We did have one of our favourite guides on the whole trip, she was quite the character, unfortunately i did not write down her name :(

We skipped the afternoon game drive and just stayed at the lodge. They have a nice secluded watering hole with a shaded hide, which we planned to do some bird watching from. However it absolutely poured rain all afternoon and so we stayed in our tent, which turned out to be super relaxing listening to the rain.

The food was the best we had on the trip, they have an excellent kitchen. We even got a sorbet between courses :)"

"This was the last lodge we stayed at in our two week clockwise circuit of Namibia.

The chalets at Okonjima Bush Camp are spaced about 100m apart and all have private views of the savannah. There’s no a/c, but these actually worked at cooling down the inside.

Our guide, Mathew, was really knowledgeable about the local wildlife and fauna. We learnt quite a bit, even though we’ve been going on lots of game drives the past week or so. We saw a number of species we hadn’t yet seen on this trip, including dik-diks, duikers, and warthogs. We also saw a family of bat-eared foxes, and a canary, which I’ve not previously seen in the wild.

We returned to the lodge around 9:30am, and had a large breakfast (probably better classified as a brunch given the time and the amount we ate).

The safari schedule here at Okonjima Bush Camp is more what we were accustomed to - breakfast after the morning safari, a long break over the afternoon, and then an evening safari. It’s much more relaxing than the six hour excursions we had earlier on the trip.

The afternoon safari was tracking leopards, which are collared here. We started with spotting a non-collared one, which was a bonus! Our guide then used an antenna to locate two other leopards. Unfortunately they were sleeping in dense underbrush and not photographable. (I took some anyways).

We ended the game drive with a collared leopard who was resting after eating. It wasn’t interested in us and was habitualized to the vehicle, but we still got a little close to it for our comfort and the leopards imo.

The lodge was a nice ending to our 2 weeks on safari"

"We tried a different hotel at the end of our trip vs where we stayed at the start.

The Olive Grove was okay. The food was good, they had a lot of vegetarian options on the menu but only a couple were available.

The hotel was functional, and easy to get to the airport the next morning."