Travel reviews by Mr and Mrs R. from London

"All the camps, not just Little Vumbura, need to provide a way of communicating between the rooms/ tents and the main camp; My wife was stuck in her room for about four hours because the staff forgot to go and collect her and she had no way of getting in touch with them to remind them to come and collect her. (There was a lion about.) Someone else was stuck for about six hours! There is also no way of telling people not to leave their rooms. What is to be done if there is a lion on the path? Presumably no one can walk down to the rooms to give a warning.

Similarly all the camps should improve the quality of their wine. I suspect it is more a question of choosing better, rather than needing to spend much or any more.

We had a wonderful time. Excellent guide. Two splendid boat trips. Radios only had limited, quiet, use. (See comments on radios below.) Great food and service."

"Apart from the wine and contacting the central area points made in relation to Little Vumbura above, we ate dinner outside each night. It was very cold. Having a drink round the fire before dinner was fine. But why could we not dine under the tent and be warm?

And food and service was a long way below Little Vumbura.

And on drives, too much loud chat on the radio, most of which seemed to be idle chat and/ or repetitive. Radio transmissions should be kept to a minimum. See Lagoon camp below.

We also had five jeeps round and chasing a single leapard for about 20 minutes, which seemed excessive.."

"The situation and the facilities are magnificent. Better than both Little Vumbura and Gomoti.

But, food and service very poor.
Breakfast before a drive: porridge and cereal and sponge cakes. No proper orange juice. No cheese. No fruit. (Although i did get some cheese and fruit by asking for it; but why not put it out.) No eggs. No meat, cold or hot (bacon). (But they did produce specially strong coffee for the Notts every day after we had asked for stronger on the first morning.)
Lunch unimaginative and again only boring fruit: apples.
Dinner very poor and dull food. e g overly spiced lentil soup followed by dry tasteless roast chicken underdone carrots and tinned peas . No choice.
Very hot Mexican soup followed by shredded beef ( dry and tasteless ) cold stir fried broccoli, cold stuffed gem squash . Inedible bullet like chocolate donut to finish. No choice of wine unless one asked for it. Service, particularly of wine, incredibly slow.

We had a torch in our room. It didn't work. And when we went to the management they said "It's a wind up torch". But no-one had explained this to us (and we left the torch as we were about go on a drive and it did not get back to the room).

I suspect a combination of not enough staff and no proper management of the staff that were there.

Night drives are a waste of time unless you are a fanatic. In all our trips, we saw half a civet, half a hare, and a black backed jackal. And we saw the jackal in daylight which was much more use.

We did have a wonderful sighting of lion cubs with Spencer and James.

The other guides spent far too much time talking on the radio turned up very loud. Much of what was said appeared to be either repetitive or idle chatter or both, and it was very distracting and off putting. Radio transmissions should be kept to a minimum and when made should be as brief as possible.

Problems of communication. Language was a problem. They did not have a good grasp of Enlish. One example only. We asked the camp to get their office in Maun to reserve us seats on a booked BA fllight as we could not do it ourselves as there is no wifi. We gave them all the details to allow them to access the BA website and told them to do so after 7.20 pm on the day we handed the details over as we could not reserve seats earlier without paying. First they came back about 6 pm and said we had to pay. Then, when we again explained they had to do it after 7.20, they went off and, in effect, never came back. We did eventually get our flight details paper back but not reservation.

For sighting details see my separate e-mail."

"it is a wonderful establishment in a beautiful place. It is somewhat dated in its design and decoration but the facilities are first class and the whole thing is magnificent and works very well. So it might not suit you if you wanted full five star luxury.

The staff were most willing and friendly and helpful.

And they suggested and organised an excellent series of additional trips. Helicoper over Victoria Falls. Visit to the Zimbabwe side of the Falls. Breakfast on Livingstone Island with a swim on the lip of the Falls."