Travel reviews by Mrs B. from Cambridge

"Comfortable hotel, perfect for a stopover to and from the camps."

"Mwaleshi was marvellous, just what we had hoped. A “bush “ camp in a remote wilderness setting, perfectly tranquil apart from the din of lions roaring, elephants trumpeting, hyenas howling and birdsong. Our guide Brent was superb, sharing fascinating information about the wildlife and environment.

We loved our walks. The close encounters with animals feel so very much more real than when sitting in a safari truck. The walking was quite manageable for our group of only moderately active people in their late sixties.
The camp was charmingly rustic but also very comfortable with amazing food and friendly helpful staff.

We agree with many of your previous travellers that a walking safari might not be the right thing for a first time visitor to Africa. One cannot expect clear views of huge numbers of animals. But this is compensated by the feeling of intimacy of the animal encounters. Priceless!"

"Our stay at Takwela was excellent.

Its riverside setting is beautiful at all times of day. We enjoyed a mix of walking safaris and game drives on the vehicle, which offered us a perfect combination of wildlife experiences. As at Mwaleshi, we were in the hands of an excellent knowledgeable guide. Alex imparted fascinating information about everything around us, including the animal tracking.

All of the staff were friendly and helpful. The cabins are very comfortable, with lovely beds and completely effective mosquito nets as at Mwaleshi (not that there were any mosquitos during our visit). The food was fantastic - I am so impressed with what the guys rustle up in the camp kitchens."

"See previous entry from our outward journey
[Edit: Comfortable hotel, perfect for a stopover to and from the camps.]"

"This was excellent, just what we had hoped for. The camp struck a perfect balance of feeling close to nature and providing creature comforts.

The staff were uniformly good at their jobs, charming, helpful but not intrusive. The guiding and activities were excellent - as there was always a guard as well as the guide driving, there were 2 pairs of expert eyes spotting. Excellent viewing of mammals large and small, and birds. Wonderful photo opportunities.

Very professionally run. Full marks."

"Wow! We were the only guests, so it couldn't have been a more luxurious personalised experience.

With the assistance of our expert guides, wildlife viewing was excellent, whether from the vehicles, hides or when on walking safari."

"Beautiful setting, comfortable camp. However we were a little disappointed with some of the activities. The guides were good, but on each of our excursions (except two within the park when a park guard came with us) we were accompanied by only by the guide and we did not have a guard as well, as we had had at the previous camp. This made a difference to the amount of wildlife spotted - impossible for the guide to be concentrating on the driving as well as the spotting.

More importantly, I also felt that the camp was a bit slack about safety. On one evening float trip on the Zambezi, our sundowners on an island in the middle of the river were followed by engine failure. The radio did not work so there was no way of summoning help. The boat was equipped with but a single paddle, not enough to propel a boat of that weight. As darkness fell, our guide heroically jumped into the thigh deep water and waded for 10 minutes towards the Zambian bank, pulling the boat behind him. Then in the darkness he shouted for help in the hope that someone might hear. Luckily they did and a relief boat was sent from the sister lodge. fortunately the other 2 guests and I were pretty unflappable. But I was VERY unhappy that the guide should have felt obliged to put himself at risk by jumping into water which we knew to be crocodile infested.

When we related this story to the camp manager, she was quite unconcerned. I think the management did not take it as an opportunity to assess the risks and act on risk managment e.g. simple measures like having an adequate number of paddles and punt poles in each boat. Is engine failure a rare occurrence? Not in our experience - it happened again the next day. The camp manager told us a story of some French guests getting very upset last year when their vehicle broke down on a night drive in the park, again I felt her point was that they were unreasonably bothered by this.

On this type of holiday, one should expect the unexpected to happen. What I would also expect is an appropriate response from management to minimise the rsik of recurrence. This and a few other very minor events made us think that at this camp the emphasis was on style rather than substance."