Lovely People, Rooms are a bit worn
Nov 23, 2020 Karishma P London, United Kingdom
This was our first trip post COVID lockdown and we were very excited to have our first local holiday after relocating to South Africa last November.
At the same time, I was also extremely apprehensive about hygiene and risk of infection. For these reasons, I chose the Black Rhino Game lodge as it had limited rooms, they are individual cabins and…
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This was our first trip post COVID lockdown and we were very excited to have our first local holiday after relocating to South Africa last November.
At the same time, I was also extremely apprehensive about hygiene and risk of infection. For these reasons, I chose the Black Rhino Game lodge as it had limited rooms, they are individual cabins and well spaced out.
The staff at the lodge and at the restaurant were lovely and helpful. All our problems ended up being with the room.
We had room 23. The air conditioning just wasn't working powerfully enough. I'm not sure if it was a problem with the AC unit or the size of the room, but the room, just wasn't cooling. The first night, I did not sleep at all because of the heat. The windows were just sliding panels with no wire mesh, so keeping them open was not an option. We asked someone to take a look at it, but they said they could not find anything wrong. The second night, we moved the furniture a bit, I laid a towel down on the sofa and slept on the sofa, so as to be directly under the ac. At least with that, I was able to sleep a few hours.
The sinks and the shower took very very long to drain. Having dirty water splash back on your legs when you shower isn't how I'd choose to clean myself. They tried to do something and managed to fix the sink a bit, but we had to run the shower on 1/3 the water force and keep shutting it off to allow the water to drain, multiple times.
No signage: Our room was quite far from the lodge and there are multiple pathways, while the torchlights were helpful, we kept losing our way in the pre dawn and late night darkness. Tiny arrows with room numbers would really really help.
Given covid situation, room service was restricted to once a day with no turn down service to minimise contact and we were ok with that.
All meals were pre plated, except for the cold part of the breakfast buffet, which was again, understandable.
We enjoyed most of our meals, except one risotto that had beautiful mushrooms in it, but turned out really salty.
Our multiple previous experiences of game parks in Kenya and Kruger have given us high expectations.
For the price, I expected better quality and standards, I'm not sure how much they have had to compromise to accommodate hygiene practices and government regulations, but it fell short of our expectations a bit.
The location is lovely, loads of birds and wildlife come to the watering hole near the restaurant. The staff, does try their best. We had great sightings of rhinos and lions and cubs. Given their location, they take you into Pilanesberg during the morning safari through a private route, but in the evening, they drive you around the Black Rhino reserve itself.
Do not miss the morning safari, the 2 parks have a very different feel to them, so make sure you experience both. There's plenty of wildlife within the black rhino reserve, so you shouldn't miss much.
We self drove into Pilanesberg after checking out and loved that experience too. Just note that the restaurant within Pilanesberg at the old court has closed down.
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