Travel reviews by Ms W from Bedfordshire

"Very welcoming. All staff really friendly and very helpful, this was the best thing about this hotel. Food very good. A nice place to get over your plane journey and to relax. Liked the pool area - not at all busy.

Area around hotel not that great.

Rooms typical of this sort of hotel, but were fine.

Would recommend this as somewhere to stay in Dar for a short pit stop is Dar."

"Because we stayed here a week we really began to get to know the staff - and they really made our stay. They were all so friendly, helpful and just generally nice.

If you want to have a reasonable value place to stay where you can go into the Park or do other things this is ideal. It is not luxourious but is charming in its own way. We all loved it here and couldn't recommend it enough (to the right people with the right expectations).

While we were here we travelled to Njombe and Iringa, went to the Isimila stones, visited a masai village, went to church and to the Park. This was all arranged through Albanand his team.

Our grading below is based on value for money."

"Again we did overall really enjoy our stay here but if I am honest I would be careful about recommending it.

Although it was very quiet when we were there if you go when it is busy it could be really noisy."

"It was fine.

Room did not have good natural light and lights provided were not really good enough to read.

Pool area nice - but no obvious service from there.

My luggage did not arrive with me and I did feel that the hotel could have tried a little harder to help me get it back, e.g. I had to keep asking about whether they had managed to locate it, what I needed to do etc. (I know it was not their fault that it was lost but when you are in that situation you are looking for some real help!)."

"Only negative was that the pool was out of action and one of the reasons we have chosen to stay here was because of the pool (especially because of the nephew and nieces).

Abraham was our giude and was brillant and was our special person here, my nieces and nephews loved him.

Having been on safari many years ago we did notice that there were quite a lot of vehicles in the Park in this area.

Loved the way that they tried to make each day a little different, sundowners set up on the river bank one day and then the trip over to the park on the pontoon the next - all made you feel special.

The evening / night trips were quite long though.

The food was excellent, especially the brunch!"

"We loved it here. The chalets were charming (once we were used to the frogs!).

The staff were wonderful and Jo was the very best hostess you could have had. Jo was our special person here.

Food again was great.

Only point to make was that Shaddy, our guide, just seemed to have lost his enthusiasim a bit (and we really only noticed this once we meet Aubrey our guide at Kakuli and compared). He was fine and we all liked and respected him, but somehow on reflection we felt that we had not made the most of his wisdom.

The game was quite limited around Nsolo so two nights here is enough from that perspective."

"We thought the location was fabulous with the views over the river and also great for game drives with plenty to see and not many other vehicles. a good place to come after Nsolo and really nice to be able to walk from Nsolo into the camp.

Aubrey, our guide, was fabulous. He was so good with my nephew and nieces, telling stories and really engaging with them, even putting them on the spot and testing if they had listened to him! They loved him (as did the rest of us).

Minor point about food, snacks on sundowners were not always vegetarian."

"We all loved Tongabezi. It is a place where you can bring the family and feel really at home and comfortable and there is so much to do. Everything we did exceeded our expectations, from the included visit to the falls, the sunset cruise, canooing etc to the other activities we paid extra for. We did the walking with lions and cheetah which my nieces and nephew were totally blown away with. The visit to Livingstone Island was also fantastic. Ideally, we would recommend a minimum of 4 nights here, as there is so much to do as well as just being a lovely place to relax.

[Ed: These travellers organised the extra activities - including the 'walking with lions' - themselves, and paid for them locally, whilst they were staying at Tongabezi.]

Again the staff were brilliant and were all excellently briefed on what you were up to. We liked the effort they made to know you as individuals and do what they could do make your stay the best. You never felt hurried or that you had to fit into someone else's timetable. Only staff member who was not so good was our valet, but the others more than made up for it.

Minor point for furture reference, the Family Cottage double room is very open and we would only think it is suitable for families, two couples might not find it private enough.

River Cottage was lovely."