Guest reviews Garonga Safari Camp, Makalali Private Game Reserve

by B8GAF

Wow....Just wow !!

So much I could say about Garoga but I'll keep it short. The whole place is amazing, from all the staff the food and accommodation I couldn't fault a thing. We had a terrible noise outside our tent caused by the monkeys on the first night, only to learn in the morning a Leopard had been outside our room. We seen every animal possible on our game drives, including 2 lion kills. One was during the day and one was at night. Have to be honest and say I did shed a tear during the first one, although I know how lucky we were to witness this. Our guides Jordi and Phineas were excellent in every way, we laughed and enjoyed each others company along with the other guests. Also had Kaizer and Gladstone on a couple of drives and they were also excellent. The food was amazing and a big thanks to all the chefs and other staff during meal times. All this couldn't be possible without our morning morning calls from Collin, much appreciated. I could go on and on about Garonga and what we seen, but I'll leave it with a word for Mr Smith. Your staff speak very highly of you and it shows that they are happy in there work. Mr Smith you have got it spot on......until next time. Cheers.....The Fenton's

by Karibabird Perth, Australia

Unreliable, undependable and unprofessional

We recently booked Little Garonga for these dates 28/12/22 - 02/01/23. We received notification the reservation was confirmed from the lodge via our SA agent.  One week later our agent received further notification there was a "Mixup” with the booking and these dates were no longer available. Subsequently we were offered a room upgrade if we would move our dates. In order to change dates we had to revise our Complete Itinerary at several other lodges to accommodate this "Mixup". (This included international flights). Our agent worked out a solution with Little Garonga that would align with our other travel arrangements, Little Garonga confirmed they could accommodate the new dates 24/12/22 - 29/12/22. Less than 24 hours later we received another notification from Little Garonga stating they can no longer honour those dates and in fact had NO availability in December! We are experienced travellers having multiple safaris in Africa. Never have we experienced such unreliable and unprofessional handling of booking procedures. Disappointingly no acknowledgement of what went wrong from the lodge has been given, this makes it hard to understand how genuine these two “ Mixups“ were. How does a booking be confirmed not once but twice and then it is not available?

by N7184DVrebeccal New York

The Best!!!

We officially booked this trip in 2020, but the world had other plans of course. However, we finally went this month (May 2022) for our long awaited honeymoon and my husband and I are so glad we went — even with the years of waiting, the trip far exceeded all of our expectations! We stayed for 5 nights and had Kaizer and Gladstone as our guide and tracker for our twice daily game drives. They were able to not only make sure we saw 4 of the big five (though not finding that leopard was definitely NOT for lack of trying), but also were able to situate us for some incredible game viewing — like sitting in the middle of an elephant herd, watching lions and cubs feed on a carcass and watching two cheetahs snuggle. They also had us going off-road through the bush once they found Rhino prints — which was an incredible experience (and they did find the Rhinos which was even more incredible)!! We saw so many animals other than the big 5 (e.g., inpalas, heyenas, bush babies, steenbok, giraffes, zebras, hippos, cheetah, crocodile, monkey, zazoo bird, warthog, wildebeest) and so many baby animals too. Kaizer and Gladstone were truly phenomenal guides and had so much knowledge to share with us. They really made our experience one we will never forget. We also did a bush walk with Josiah and Kaizer and they taught us the basics about how to track the animals. The walk itself was really interesting and we learned a ton about the different animal tracks that we were then able to incorporate on our game drives — which made them even more fun! We also had an incredible experience with the staff more generally. Steph was so kind and helpful at all times, including shuffling things a bit so we could squeeze in one last game drive before we left. Collin was always an absolute delight with the morning wake up calls and walking us back to our room in the evening. Aldrin especially was a true delight — he lit up the room whenever we were eating our meals and even taught my husband some words in his native language, which was such a treat! The food was always phenomenal. I was worried about my vegetarianism and they always accommodated me with ease and absolutely delicious meals. (And my husband is a picky eater at home, but at Garonga, he devoured every meal and loved it!!!) Truly world class food. We had such an amazing safari experience with Garonga and were so sad to leave. We can’t wait to return one day soon with our future family!

by Seraph101 London

Fantastic Stay

Fantastic stay at Garonga with probably the friendiest and hardest working staff I've come across. We arrived a bit late for the afternoon drive but they were good enough to drive us out to our appointed ranger, Kaiser, and tracker, Gladstone, who were amazing and had a lovely way of teaching us about the local area and animals. Game viewing highlights included, a couple of Cheetas and also a pride lions feeding on a Giraffe. Sadly, we only stayed for 1 night at the Safari Camp but would have loved to have stayed for longer.

by sammorster

Awesome time

What a stunning place in the secret bushveld. Service and food was amazing and wonderful fellow guests. The rooms are exceptional- huge bed and overlooking the river. Overall atmosphere was really great - thanks