Reviews of The Hide

We were really sorry to read this report. We passed the comments to lodges team where Lorraine, who has owned The Hide for many years, quickly replied that she was devastated and amazed by it, before taking time to investigate the issues.

Firstly, for her first few days, this traveller went out with Jean, one of the Hides learner guides. Jeans a young Zimbabwean man of 20 who has grown up with a passion for wildlife, especially birds and spent a lot of time camping in the bush (notably in Mana Pools). After his A-levels he worked and saved to follow his dream of becoming a professional guide. He put himself through the first set of guides exams, passing first time in Feb 2011. (Quite a feat if studying on your own!) It gave Jean the qualification to guide game drives, whilst working as an apprentice to a Zim-pro guide.

The Hide heard about him, and offered him a position over a year ago, and Jean has spent the last year shadowing the camps excellent pro-guides. He has already, from his salary, bought all the literature to study and the necessary rifle. Jeans a very well-mannered young man, but under-confident. His knowledge is said to be excellent, but hes shy and doesnt always have the confidence to impart that knowledge to guests. Clearly he didnt have the confidence to deal with the sand trap near the jackal that he should have had!

Zimbabwes Zim-pro standard of guiding is the gold standard in Africa: the continent top guiding qualification. Getting it requires many years of learning, and practice on the job. Thus some guides at even the best camps are learner-guides; they are qualified to conduct game drives, but not to lead walking safaris. Jean was one of these guides.

The Hide is now reviewing their policy on their learner guides; re-considering how much guides like Jean are used to guide guests on their own. They pride themselves on high guiding standards, and realise that allocating this inexperienced guide to one guest for multiple days wasnt fair.

That said, they deeply regret that this traveller didnt tell the manager what she felt much earlier. Had they known that there was a problem they would have immediately swapped her guide for one of their more senior guides.

Weve had good game viewing in Hwange, and guests staying for three nights just before our traveller had five sightings of three different leopards, and good lion sightings. However, we understand that a small bushfire close to camp a few days earlier, and some burning of firebreaks on Hwanges boundary, by the National Parks Authority, may have chased some of the game, including the areas usual pride of lions (with cubs), out of its normal territory near the lodge.

Regarding the bottled water, most camps are now doing away with plastic disposable water bottles; the environmental impact of their transport and disposal is massive. The Hide has installed a top-of-the-range five stage reverse osmosis water filter to produce very pure, clean drinking water. This kind of system is becoming more the norm than plastic bottled water across Africa, so Lorraine apologised that this clearly hadnt been explained properly. The Hides water is not untreated in fact its probably of a higher quality than most municipal water supplies in the developed world.

Water for showers in each tent is heated individually by gas. Whilst these systems are checked regularly, clearly this one wasnt working properly. If this traveller had reported the problem to the lodge team, theyre sure that they could have rectified it immediately, and got the shower piping hot. This issue wasnt reported to the managers by this traveller, or anyone staying in the room before or since.