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Review by: Trevor Hayes, Cape Town (stayed: January 2012)
We thoroughly enjoyed 4 days at Amakhala at their Safari Lodge. We enjoyed the variety of animals, the trip to Addo Elephant Park where we watched about 150 elephants at a water hole. We enjoyed the visit to the Born Free Foundation, the game drives and the short boat trip. Noni, the main ranger was a hoot!.Very knowlegeable and a lovely character. The food was very good and so was the service. The lodge is very well run by excellent staff, but where are the owners?
In the Amakhala website it says "here you will also experience the warm hospitality of the settler family descendants who run The Heritage Collection of Game lodges " It says the Safari Lodge "is under the personal supervision of Mike and Justine Weeks". In the room manual there is a detailed story about the settlers history and hardships, explaining how the settler families decided to amalgamate their farms and focus on game lodges as a way to survive. Unfortunatly these are empty words. On the last day when I asked the staff why we had not seen the owners I was told that they were "shy"!
Being a descendant of an 1820 settler family myself I found this amazing and disappointing. As a businessman I also found it surprising. Apparantly this industry is not booming in the Eastern Cape. Many lodges have changed hands and many have closed. Well, if the owners do not show any interest that could be one of the main reasons.
(After our stay at Amakhala we spent 3 days at another lodge in the area. Again, brilliant staff, facilities, food, game drives etc but the owners also did not put in an appearance.) |
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