Travel reviews by Mr & Mrs B from Tadworth

"le Must was a very oldie worldy guest house on the banks of the Orange river in Uppington. We spent a very pleasant evening here and haviing dinner in Uppington."

"The Xlaus safari camp was well run with excellent and very friendly, helpful staff. Their were plenty of activities from day walks, game drives, "sun downers" and star gazing. The arrangements went smoothly, everything went well and the whole party thoroughly enjoyed themselves very much. The food was especially of very high quality thanks to Ellen and her people in the kitchen.

The visit to the Kalahri bushmans camp was OK but none of us would undertake it again as not there was not much to be observed or learnt. However the concept of involving the indiginous people as developed by Pete the camp manager was quite brilliant. The camp itself was decorated with many local, interesting and appealing artefacts.

The camp was having a few problems with their water wells and water purifiers when we were there but the only noticable problem was with the swimming pool which was cloudy and quite unappealling. The electricity was on for a limited time each day which wasn't a problem but I suspect that the pool needed extra time to filter properly. A little more shade around the pool would have been a bonus.

It was a very hot time of year and there was no air-conditioning but surprisingly it wasn't too much of a problem. The "cottages" cooled down very well at night.

The evening winds were a wonderful experience and interesting phenomina.

The moonrise on one particular night was spectacular while the over abundance of stars was a wonder every night.

There was a good library with reference books and Pete was very knowledgable on just about all topics. His love for the area and the people was quite obvious and contagious!

The only shortfall was the lack of big game although we were warned of this before the trip. There were plenty of sightings of Gemsbok, Springbok, Springers, Ostrich, Wildebeest, Jackals, black backed Hyenas, desert foxes etc. but we were not priveleged to see lions, cheetahs etc."

"The drive from Uppington to Augrabies was very interesting with all of the agriculture that had built up along the Orange river, especially the grape growing, picking and raisin production facilities.

The Falls were very dramatic and well worth a visit but the government Lodge was very "tired" and in desperate need of attention. The restaurant food was very poor. Our original stay was planned for two nights but we ended up checking out early after one night and returning to Uppington. We all felt as though one day was enough. Perhaps we should have stayed in the Lodge outside of the park and gone in as soon as the gates opened. However the gates opened at about 7 to 7:30 and because of the heat at that time of year we really need to start our walking at first light, i.e. 6 am. Our morning walk was very good however.

We arrived by about 4 pm on the first day, checked in and went for the short walk out onto the rocks to view the falls. This was very good. After freshening up we went to the restaurant for our evening meal. Although the restaurant and service was OK the food was terrible. I made a very poor choice with the pasta but nobody else seemied to fair any better.

Early the next morning we got up early and went for a very nice 2 to 3 hour walk. Luckily we had enough food with us to cater for breakfast in our cottages. After breakfast we went into the fenced part of the park and spent several hours driving around. This was very enjoyable.

After this we felt as though we had done everyything of interest and as the accomodation/catering was not much good decided to move on and forfeit the second night."