Travel reviews by Miss H & Mr B from UK

"The camp is located in a very good game viewing area. Plenty of animals wandered through the camp during our stay including elephant and giraffe. One evening on our way back to camp we passed four lions who were lying a few hundred yards away from the camp entrance!!!

The rooms were just as we expected from the brochure description - comfortable with everything we needed for our stay. They could get quite hot during the day and remained very warm at night, but we have experienced this in alot of other camps which we have stayed in so were expecting it.

Although the food was well cooked and tasty we did find it a bit repetitve and unimaginative. We are both vegetarian and found that for most dinners we were given the potatos and vegetables that the other guests were having with their meat or fish and nothing else. We have been to similar camps and have been served more complete vegetarian meals so we know that it is possible to be more favorably catered for. Also, we found that having aubergine all 4 evenings was very repetitive and disappointing particularly as we are not overly fond of aubergine!!!

The activities were extremely flexible with a choice of walking, boat trips, full day game drives, half day game drives and shorter game drives. The driver who took us out for all of our game drives - Ally - was very competent and was very good at tracking and finding animals. We were very lucky to see Wild Dogs on two separate occasions and also a leopard who started off in a tree before getting down the tree, walking right past our vehicle and then started stalking an impala!!! The guides who accompanied Ally on our game drives - Samuel and Ian - were both very informative and knew alot about various animals and birds but it did seem that they had memorised the text book and were telling us everything they could remember about a certain subject.

The only negative point to mention is the fact that we had to pay for water on the game drives. This should really be inclusive in the daily rate as it was at all of the other camps we have stayed at.

Overall we had a very enjoyable stay at Lake Manze, which was made particularly special by our great game viewing encounters. Thank you to all of the staff at Lake Manze, particularly Ally our driver."

"We found the camp to be located quite a distance away from the main game viewing areas in Ruaha. Apart from a large pride of lions who we saw one evening on our return to camp, there didn't seem to be any other animals close to camp. As a result of this our driver was keen for us to do full day game drives so that we could travel further distances. We were more than happy to do this as we prefer to be out all day rather than have a rest in the middle of the day.

We were extremely lucky with the animals that we did see - a leopard in a tree, a cheetah with her cub and plenty of lions.
The rooms were as we expected from the brochure description - comfortable with everything we needed for our stay. The evenings tended to get cooler which was nice as you could get a rest from the heat.

The food at Mdonya was excellent. Very tasty and well cooked. We are both vegetarian and found that we were very well catered for. On our last evening we were treated to a private meal outside our tent which was a lovely surprise.

Overall we had a very enjoyable stay at Mdonya Old River Camp and would like to thank all the staff for their efforts particularly the Chef."

"The camp is located very close to excellent game viewing areas, so we didn't have to travel far to see plenty of animals.
There are only 6 tents at Kwihala which are well spaced out and are beautifully furnished. There was only us and another couple staying at the camp during our stay so it felt very exclusive!!!

The food was excellent - tasty and well cooked, although we did find a couple of the dinners disappointing. We are both vegetarian and found that for 2 out of the 4 dinners we were given the potatos and vegetables that the other guests were having with their meat or fish and nothing else.

Overall we had a very enjoyable stay at Kwihala."

"We only stayed at the hotel overnight before our early morning flight home so did not really use any of the facilities.

The food was very good and the hotel was close to the airport which was ideal for what we wanted."