Mark Barnes and his family enjoyed the ultimate African safari to Kruger and Botswana, and even found time to visit the world’s largest falls : Victoria Falls. Natasha cultivated an itinerary to suit their needs and budget; and decided that a trip to southern Africa wouldn’t be complete without sampling the delights of coastal Cape Town! Mark and family explored the many activities on offer in Cape Town, and certainly made the most of their time in the Mother City. Natasha’s amazing choice of accommodation included :
- LawHill Luxury Apartments in Cape Town
- Honeyguide Khoka Moya in Manyeleti Game Reserve
- Batonka Guest Lodge at Vic Falls
- Chobe Bakwena
Here is their feedback :
Hi Natasha,
We are safely back in Australia and spending a few days in Perth before heading home to Melbourne.
We had an amazing time and loved all the places we stayed at.
Lawhill was a great apartment and in a perfect location. The staff could not have been more friendly and helpful, they were fantastic.
They organised one of their tour guides to take us to Cape of Good Hope, Cape Point and Penguins – he was excellent.
We went up to table mountain, fairly cloudy but it broke up a bit before we got down.
Went to the big botanical gardens starting with a K and did walks around there. Unfortunately we booke Robben Island each day but the fairies were cancelled each day due to weather. We loved Cape Town, just slightly disappointed we missed Robben Island due to weather but we looked around the museum.
Honeyguide was excellent. This would most likely be the highlight of the trip. Accommodation was great, food great staff great. We had a fantastic guide (KK). We had amazing game drives seeing the big five and more. We had already seen the big five, but on our second last day we saw the big five in one day. We loved how they can go off road for the cats and get us up close to see them. An experience our family will never forget.
Victoria Falls was amazing and good to see since we have already seen Niagara Falls. We loved the walk along the falls.
The accommodation was very nice and again the staff wonderful. The guide who took us to the Falls was very good and went out of his way to take us to markets and out to lunch. Donald was very good.
Chobe’s accommodation and food was amazing. We enjoyed the game drives, particularly doing two boat game drives as a point of difference to what we have already done. The game drives were good, but I think we were a bit spoilt at Kruger so slightly less exciting since they have to stay on the roads and cannot go off road following the animals. They appear to follow tracks and see what they see, whereas at Kruger they track animals more to make sure you get to see what you want to see. It was still great to see elephants and giraffes and other animals come down to the Chobe River to drink and we saw more Hippo’s there. We did get to see a family of Lions there on two accotions and that was nice. We loved the extra activities you could do at Bekwena Lodge. We went to quadripoint by boat and to a school. This was nice to see. The female staff were great and put on a nice Buma Night – both traditional dance and food on our last night. The only issue we had was our shower flooded for two days so we couldn’t shower there for two day, but they did get it fixed for us after that. We loved the eco friendly way they run and the real African feel it gave.
Overall we had a great experience that my family will carry with them for the rest of their lives. We thank you for all your organising of our trip and it ran very smoothly. I have a South African friend at home who help people organise trips to SA and he helped me with what we should see. I will be recommending you to him so he can pass on your name to people who want to travel to SA.
Thanks again for all your work you have been very helpful and efficient in dealing with my family.
I will send you some photos of our holiday soon.
Regards
Mark Barnes
