There are no words superlative enough to describe this place. My husband, two teenage boys and I stayed three nights at River Lodge and three nights at Billy's Lodge. The lodges are stunning. The beds are very comfortable and there's plenty of hot water for showers. Each main lodge has a long raised walkway out to a viewing deck. I tried to read my book out there on the deck at River Lodge during our down time in the middle of the day, but I kept getting distracted by the monkeys playing on the deck and the waterbucks strolling along the river below. I tried again at Billy's Lodge, but there I was distracted by the warthog family rolling in the muddy watering hole. The food was great, especially the soups, muffins, calamari, ostrich and the traditional bbq. The lodge staff members were kind and very responsive. They went to the trouble of stocking soy milk for my son, which I imagine is not an easy thing to do in the bush, although I have to confess that after all their effort, he only wanted to drink the delicious different fruit juices. Most importantly, the managers were very friendly and excited to share all their incredible knowledge of the plants and animals around us.
As for the game drives, I can't imagine better guides and trackers (Laurence and Richard at River Lodge and Tim and Hector at Billy's Lodge). Truly, we saw something that took our breath away on every drive. We had some luck, of course, and they communicate sightings over the radio with guides from other lodges, but our guys found so many astonishing sights. We tracked lions to find them eating a waterbuck, we watched a mother lion introducing her five week old cubs to the world, and we even saw lions mating. I will leave that one to your imagination! Maybe the most extraordinary sight of all was a male lion bellowing at other lions across the bush. He roared for about a minute eight feet away from our truck. You felt the sound in your bones. We saw hippos in the river and we watched leopards eating an impala, and we also watched rhinos, giraffes, rare and gorgeous wild dogs, wildebeest, water buffalo, kudu, baboons, zebras, orb spiders, terrapins, Walburg's eagles, an owlette (so cute!), baby hyenas, jackals and much more, even a chameleon in the dark one night! Laurence and Hector were happy to linger as long as we wanted one drizzly morning in the middle of a herd of about 10 elephants, including two small ones who were play wrestling. It was magical. And all the guides, but Tim in particular, were very happy to share their passion and knowledge of the animals.
The lodges are fenced, the guides explained how they maneuver around the animals so as not to stress them, and they explained how the animals perceived our truck. We always felt completely safe. That said, this is definitely a trip for older children. They need to enjoy sitting for 3-4 hours twice a day on the drives, they need to be quiet when the guides ask, and they must be dependable to follow instructions to never stand up or leave the truck except when the guides say that it is safe (which is during drink and bathroom breaks). Our teenagers were the perfect age. They absorbed everything around them and appreciated the wonder of it all. Honestly, the most unusual sighting all week was our 15 year old who generally sleeps until noon on the weekends. Every day, he was up and dressed and ready with his camera when it was still dark outside at 5 am. None of us wanted to miss a single thing!
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