East London Coast Nature Reserve

The highlight of our holiday to South Africa! A beautiful lodge with comfortable air con and tranquility (and yes a few necessary spiders) but providing the most incredible authentic experience of the wildlife, animals, birds, flora and fauna of this game reserve. Food and wine were excellent and plentiful, the service was superb, including gin and tonics during our afternoon game drive! We had an excellent guide, Greg, with such a knowledge and passion for his work as a guide, and he led us to observe over 60 species over the course of 2 days and 4 game drives, starting with a wake up call at 5.30am for the pre-dawn game drive til 9.30am, then a second at 4pm lasting til nearly 8pm. He drove us through a fantastic storm, thunder and lightning and an impressive downpour which had us soaked but we saw so much! Listening to him explaining the habits of turtles, giraffes, buffalo and rhinos was an education, and will stay with us for life.The memories of elephants, cheetahs, giraffes, lions, ostriches fighting a jackal, a spotted eagle owl capturing a frog at night, secretary birds stalking their prey, a brown hyena and a family of bat-eared foxes… and the white rhinos and hippo, it was all simply wonderful! Many many thanks for the best experience ever. We hope very much to return one day.

This was one of the most amazing experiences I had in my life and I would highly recommend. One piece of information I wish we had known before arriving. 1) Checkin time is 2 pm and this is exactly the tone they serve lunch . We had eaten before we arrived- but they were expecting us to eat . 2. We did our first game drive at 3:30 pm on the day we arrived. I only had a light Hoodie we stayed out till the sunset then drove back in the dark It was much cooler than we expected. They do offer blankets and ponchos which is helpful, but the next day I took my raincoat as a second layer as well as my Hoodie and I felt so much better 3. You you have a set routine for your stay which includes times of the game drives and meals. There are two game drives a day one in the morning and one in the afternoon. You have the same guide throughout your stay and the same group of people which is quite nice as a camaraderie builds up. We had a variety of nationalities from German swish Australian and us from the UK. The staff are exceptional from the moment you walk in the door to the moment you leave you feel welcome and very looked after. Our game host was called Melissa. She was an exceptionally safe driver also very confident and decisive in every situation. We saw lots of animals everything that you’d want to. She asked us what we wanted to see. We also did River Cruise as part of one of our game drives. The Lodge itself was incredibly luxurious and beautiful with an amazing view.