After reviewing my options on the Internet for lodges in Tanzania, I chose the Sable Mountain Lodge because it offers very attractive rates compared with its competition, especially for solo travelers like me. The location of the lodge enables further cost savings by being close to a railroad station and by avoiding Game Reserve entrance fees except on days when safaris are taken inside the game reserve. Some reviews that I had read suggested that the location of the lodge resulted in very long and sometimes boring safaris, but for me the entire experience was very enjoyable and the drawbacks were more than overcome by the cost savings and other benefits.

In the short period of five nights in Tanzania I managed to get a good introduction to Dar Es Salaam and Zanzibar as well as my stay at Sable Mountain Lodge, all through the excellent service of A Tent With a View Safaris, the owners of Sable Mountain Lodge. I was picked up at the Dar Es Salaam airport and I visited the National Museum, the fish market, and the Askari monument on the way to my hotel. The next morning I went to the Mwenge Carver's market and the fabulous Makumbusho Village Museum and a Masai restaurant before arriving at the train station. It did not bother me that the train was an hour late, as this ride was yet another part of my African adventure.

The individual service that I received throughout my stay was outstanding. A large group of guests (14 or 15) arrived at the lodge the same night that I did, and that group occupied the “bottom of the hill”. I was escorted by the lodge manager to a tent banda at the top of the hill. It was a long walk uphill to my banda, but I traveled to Tanzania to experience the African wilderness, and so the solitude at the top of Sable Mountain was much to my liking. As it was past the normal dinner time, I was the only person eating at the restaurant at the top of the hill. The food was delicious and very professionally presented, as were all of the other meals at the restaurant. The packed morning snacks and lunches on the safaris were nutritious but unexciting.

When the lodge manager asked me if I had any questions, my only question was about mosquitoes. From my readings on the Internet, I expected to be besieged by swarms of mosquitoes as soon as I got off the plane in Dar Es Salaam, but to my amazement I can honestly say that I did not see a single mosquito the whole time I was at the lodge. One of the benefits of the Sable Mountain Lodge is that due to its high altitude (especially at the top of the hill) mosquitoes are not a problem except in the rainy season.

I went on two full day safaris; the first day was about 12 hours and included a boat ride, and the second day was about 10 hours. Since it was my first safari, every sighting of a new animal was a thrill - my first photos showed giraffes, zebra and wildebeest barely visible through gaps in the trees. By the end of the second day I didn't bother to raise my camera unless a herd came within good camera range! My only camera was a small point and shoot model with no special lens and I still managed to take photos that generated gasps from my friends and relatives. The two safaris were long, but since I went to Tanzania to visit the wilderness I was very pleased. My small group felt fortunate to get to see packs of lions close to our Land Rover on both days, complete with two wildebeest and a giraffe that had recently been killed. I didn't feel as special when I heard that some members of the group "at the bottom of the hill" had seen a leopard and a baboon killing an impala. Our group saw just about everything except a leopard, a rhino and a wild dog, but we knew those animals were hard to see.

After my third night at the lodge, I flew to Zanzibar. As I waited at the airport for my flight, four elephants casually walked right across the runway. In Zanzibar I was again fully entertained by the excellent A Tent With a View Safaris staff, who gave me a good overview of Stone Town even though I spent less than 24 hours there.

The food was good, and our tented banda was spacious and it even had lights. However, they had put us in the highest room which was 900 steps from the car park (my wife had her step counter with her). After a 12 hour safari it was a struggle just to get to the room. The fact that in 1999 they ran out of money and only finished paving half of the path did not help. The other half was like walking up Ben Nevis and I sprained my ankle one night.

This camp is divided in to two parts the upper and lower. There were only three of us in the top part although we were told that there were 13 in the lower half, but we never saw them so cannot verify this. It was simply too far to go to the lower bar for a drink at night, or to eat in the lower dining room. As all the food has to be carried up the hill from the kitchen to the upper dining room, this was not really ideal. Overall we felt very isolated.

Our guide was good after I told him to stop sending text messages on his mobile while driving. It states that this camp is just on the border of the park and that is true. However, it is a 30 minute drive to the main gate along a truly appalling road with little game on the way. Then, due to a huge fire in the park it is a further hour to reach any area with significant numbers of animals. The meant very long days. Also the packed breakfast and lunch were poor. I would suggest staying at a camp in the park itself.

We use Tripadvisor quite a lot for preparing our trips, but we are sorry to say that our experience at this lodge was a big contrast with the other reviews here. Our three nights at Sable Mountain Lodge were supposed to be the highlight of our roundtrip in Tanzania, which took place in August 2010, but it turned out differently.

Our adventure started wrong already with our train who had technical difficulties : instead of leaving at 4 PM in Dar, we had to wait around 6 hours in Dar Station and hence arrived at the lodge around 3 AM. We were seated in first class, which was very basic and not clean, but …. this is Africa and we were very tired, so didn’t mind too much. SML cannot be blamed for this delay of course, on the contrary, we appreciated very much that Hassan from SML stayed with us in the station and got us some rice and chicken during the trip. Anyhow, you’ll understand that we will not recommend this method of transport to SML.

Here are the negatives :

FOOD : really basic and simply not enough. Breakfast was typically one egg, a rather pitiful piece of bacon, some marmalade and toast. Fine enough for us. We had three lunches during our stay : first was a bowl of pasta and a bland tomato sauce, second (during full day safari) was one mini-banana, 1 small quiche (diameter : 4 cms?) and a cupcake which was even smaller. Third lunch consisted of two small spring rolls with a leaf of lettuce. I do not mention any side dishes, since there were none. We had two dinners : first one was a bowl of rice, a bowl of steamed vegetables and two little pieces of white fish (less than 100 grams). Second dinner was vegetarian : a bowl of rice again and some different steamed vegetables. Believe us, we are no big eaters and do not have a particularly difficult taste palates… but my wife and myself were constantly in hunger.

BAR : their website mentions that they have a bar near the pool... true, but this bar was for 90% of the time unattended and no person in sight to ask something. In other lodges, the bar is often the place were people gather, tell stories, share a drink before and after dinner… not here. We missed these moments.

SAFARIS : SML is located in a remote and very little visited area of Selous, but this means also that we had the impression to be far away from where all the (more interesting) animals are. Since you need already a 30 minutes drive to reach the gates from Selous, one should really go for the full day trip for getting an exciting safari. One particular thing concerning this full day safari though : while many lodges in Selous use comfortable and safe (!) wide boats with seats, the boat that SML uses is more like a canoe. My wife felt very uncomfortable being so close to the water and worried about the stability of this small boat.

During our stay, we tried to speak to the staff about our food problems, we asked if we could purchase some extra food but this did not seem possible. They had clear instructions and one of them was not to give extra food, apparently.

Upon my return, I wrote a mail to inform them about our dissatisfaction. We got a prompt reply from Tara, stating that food is indeed rationed sometimes when the lodge is full (??), that she was surprised that the bar was not manned and that she would look into the matter. She added that SML would take responsibility if things did indeed go wrong.

When she replied a couple of days later, she replied that she had sympathy for staff leaving the bar area when there were no orders in the past hours (?? > seems strange when you compare the cost of accommodation per day with the salary of a waiter, no?) and that we were served on our second evening a “Swahili buffet that consisted of many different dishes such as Dhal, curried cabbage, vegetable rice, coconut rice, cabbage in coconut milk, spinach, red kidney beans and barbeque steak”…. We don’t know where all this food went, but it certainly wasn’t served to us.

We replied with a very detailed list of facts, but a few weeks and several reminders to Rama, Tara, and General Manager later, we did not get any reply no more. This is really frustrating. In our opinion, if they are as professional as they claim, they should simply take responsibility and reimburse (at least part) of the accommodation costs. We believe that we were correct and polite in our communications and should any reader want a transcript of our e-mails, feel free to ask.

Perhaps we were just unlucky indeed. Unlucky that there was no manager on site, unlucky that food that we should have had “disappeared”, unlucky that we have been at much better lodges and safaris in the past … anyhow, this is a place we never want to return to.

If you are looking for alternatives in Selous within the same budget range, then consider Selous Riverside Safari camp which was much better value for money. Or simply choose a shorter time at a more expensive place.

Lovely Banda set well apart from one another, but no lights along the pathways so torch required to find your way to dinner every night9and back). The food was varied, but sometimes a bit lukewarm as they had to bring it all the way from the bottom of the lodge to the dining area.
We loved the menu briefing every evening and are thinking of adopting it at home. the staff are great and nothing is too much trouble.
Disappointed the pool was closed as would've really appreciated a dip after long game drives.