Travel reviews by Mr & Mrs E from Devon

"Our first stop and it could not have been a more beautiful location. Staff, especially guides, exceptional. Particularly impressed by the manager and our guide, Wilson. Great animal sightings and the daily programme good. Food fine especially the bush brunch but overall the evening meals a bit 'meaty'.
We realise that this is a historic camp that does want to upgrade too much but the rooms are quite small and need some imaginative improvement in storage space. Nsefu is not immune from the worldwide shortage of coat hangers.
This camp's location was actually our favourite.

Re. Wildlife survey:

Buffalo - Includes herds of 200+ and 400 +
Lion - Total of 24. Sightings consisted of a pride of 10, a different pride of 11 seen after dark, and one of the highlights of the trip: circumnavigating safely around three males on foot at a distance of 80 to 100m.
Elephants - Everywhere.
Wild dog - 3 individual animals very close to a leopard."

"Great staff, food, room and location, tho' the latter not as breathtaking as Nsefu. Enjoyed a walk with guide Prius, who an encyclopedic knowledge of all things bush. Our young guide, Perry, was great company and it was good to transfer between camps with him by a 4 hour game drive.

The camp Manager, 'Keke' was a delightful worldly man.

Still short of coat hangers!

Re. Wildlife Survey:

Waterbuck - 5 sightings
Leopard - 4 different individuals sighted
Lion - 12 individuals
Wild Dog - One sighting of a pack of 13 active individuals
Highlight - At dusk two lions up one tree and a leopard up another, both in clear sight at the same time and just 60m apart."

"As the other camps, staff, food, accommodation and activities were great The two main guides, Marshall and Sebastion were outstanding. Tongue in cheek requests to Sebastion for a Pel's Fishing Owl and an Aardvark produced both in under an hour!

A couple of points:

The camp is very spread out and the need for vehicle transport because of the presence of elephant and buffalo, rather than walking could be inconvenient.

Secondly, visitors would be well advised to get their requests for activities in early. We could not initially get a boat trip when we wanted because a group had booked a boat every day for fishing. Also the manager was not that attentive in putting like minded people together. In both cases the guides were more attune and found solutions. Having said that, Mark the manager was very good and experienced.

Coat hangers etc. etc.!

The use of red spotlights at this camp greatly enhanced night drives, and allowed approach to animals without distressing them.

We really enjoyed a leisurely boat ride down the Zambezi with great views of birds and animals We would have liked to have canoed in some of the Zambezi channels but the water was too low for this.


Wildlife Survey:

Waterbuck - 10+ sightings. Very Common
Porcupine and Genets
Buffalo - Big herds of 200+
Lion - 13 individuals seen including after dark
Leopards - 9 individuals in 8 sightings!
Honey Badger - 2 sightings, including in daylight.
Civit - 6 sightings, including in daylight
Hippo and Elephant and, in the water, crocodile everywhere.

Highlights:

Passing through a huge herd of Buffalo after dark.

Watching around 6 large crocodiles dismember a dead Hippo, while another 30 smaller crocs looked on.

A single 4 hour game drive from daylight to darkness that included:
8 lions including 3 males moving after dark
5 leopards, all active, three after dark. This gave a total of 8 for the day
5 Civits
2 Punctures
1 Porcupine
1 Honey Badger
and an Aardvark!"