Reviews

Ongava Lodge was one of the highlights of our trip with an excellent game experience. We were welcomed and offered a delicious lunch and cold welcome drink (very welcome as it was the hottest day of our trip).

Leopard Mountain Lodge offers friendly staff, good game and excellent value for money. It’s a great option if you are keen on having two diversa safari experiences without having to sell granny’s jewellery in order to do it!

Makakatana Bay Lodge has a completely different feel to most game lodges, hidden in the sand forest with open views onto Lake St Lucia. We love this lodge because of its homely romantic feel (especially in the honeymoon suite), it’s setting and its diverse range of activities.

Rhino Ridge Safari Lodge is a new private concession in the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Park in Kwa Zulu Natal. It’s great value for money with contemporary eco-friendly architecture and a breathtaking view over the park.

The Hide is looking great. It remains very much an authentic safari lodge but the tents are now very luxurious – spacious and well appointed. The Hide is very serious about its game-viewing and offers not two activities per day (as is the norm) but up to four activities. It has 3 professional fully qualified Zimbabwe guides.

In my first 24 hours in Malawi I couldn’t have experienced two more contrasting areas … at Chelinda Lodge on the windswept high mountainous plateau of the Nyika National Park and the sub-tropical paradise of northern Lake Malawi. The Nyika Plateau probably doesn’t fit anyone’s visual image of Malawi. It’s an area of high Afro-montane forest – pretty rare in Africa – with a landscape of rolling granite hills well over 2,200 metres in altitude,

I love to be close to nature, in a wild and remote place, but I also like a bit of comfort. Mumbo Island Lodge is one of those special places in Africa which offer just the right balance between rusticity and comfort. Mumbo Island on Lake Malawi is one such place.
Well all I can say is that if Robinson Crusoe ever had experienced Mumbo Island, he might not have rated a return to ‘civilization’.

Mvuu Lodge is a thoroughly charming place and much recommended, as long as you have appropriate expectations as to what to expect from the game-viewing in Liwonde . The lodge lies between the Shire river and a small ox bow lagoon. It is a traditional safari camp but thoroughly comfortable and sufficiently zooty to be combined with smarter options elsewhere…

I loved Kaya Mawa – there was very little that I could fault. If you are looking for a luxurious African beach lodge to finish off your Zambian or Malawi safari, consider Kaya Mawa. I was intrigued to see whether I would really feel that I was at the ‘beach’ on Lake Malawi? The short answer is ‘yes’ – I really did feel like I was at the sea: the lake is so vast that the water just stretches forever. Plus the sandy beaches, palm trees, snorkeling…none of this broke the illusion. The enormous baobab trees were the only welcome reminder that I was in Africa. Kaya Mawa is also reminiscent of the tropical island of Zanzibar in its décor yet keeping a very African feel as well – very relaxed, very laid-back, very “barefoot luxury”.