Kambaku Safari Lodge - Namibia

Sue who has been on 6 In The Saddle rides. A wonderful experience at Kambuku, Namibia | The horses at Kambaku were lovely, calm, responsive and well behaved, and extremely well looked after. The staff seemed to have a knack of matching the right horse to rider. Most people, including myself, kept the same horse for every ride (8 rides over 6 days..)
I loved the fact that on stopping for sundowners (after most evening rides), the horses were untacked and allowed to make their own way home, sometimes quite a considerable distance.
However, I can't give full marks for the riding experience on a couple of counts:
The riding is on mainly sandy tracks through Acacia shrub. The ground is very flat, and terrain can all look a bit of the same after a while. But this did allow for some lovely long canters!
You have to like trotting! As a Western rider, there was too much trotting for my personal taste (and my back!)
I would have been a bit negative about the game viewing experience from horseback, had we not experienced a fabulous interaction with a number of giraffes!
Kabuku is a rare location in accommodating both Riders and Game Hunters. Whilst we had absolutely no problem with hunting (which is well managed, and kept completely separate), and the hunters staying were all lovely people, I think this did have an impact upon our game viewing experience. The Antelopes and Zebras appeared very wary and kept a good distance away from the horses. Only the Giraffes were curious, and we only got one good sighting of them in 8 rides.. That may be down to luck, as we did hear of guests being able to ride alongside Zebra the previous week. But when we saw Zebra, only once, and far away, they ran away still further.

Do you have any comments about the accommodation and food?

The place was wonderful! An absolute oasis. It was lovely to 'chill' out on a sunbed in the gardens between rides, and watch the birds and butterflies, plus watch wildlife coming down to the Waterhole.
The Kambuku staff were all very friendly, helpful and professional.
The standard of accommodation was excellent and the food was invariably fantastic. To be honest, although they catered for vegetarians, this would not be the best place to go for a vegetarian. Every meal featured locally hunted game meat - in particular Oryx and Eland - and delicious it was too!

[In The Saddle replies: Thank you very much for taking the time to provide your detailed feedback. We are really pleased that you enjoyed your stay at Kambaku.]

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Your information was excellent!

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Can't think of anything.

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Just that it was a long way to go for 6 days... 26 hours to get there, and 52 to get back! To be honest, if I was going anywhere involving a connecting flight again, I wouldn't do it for such a short holiday, especially where the journey between airport and destination was one of more than 4 hours! The delay on the way back was just bad luck - the plane broke down at Windhoek and the local airline favoured getting customers with destinations in Africa put on to alternative flights to Johannesburg rather than rest of the world ones... so we missed our connecting flight back to Heathrow, and had to wait 24 hours for the next one. A big complaint has gone into BA about their lack of involvement in getting things sorted.. I would suggest that Clients going to Namibia will be less at risk of such problems if they book international flights terminating and commencing at Windhoek, but German guests there flew via Quatar as it was so expensive to fly direct from Frankfurt.. Not much we can do about that..

The day trip out to Etosha was great. We did it a day earlier than as proposed in your itinerary to split the riding more equally and give our horses a rest in the middle! Again, it was a long, long journey to get there, and back, and being only there @ 09.00 to 17.00, and therefore missing the traditional dawn and dusk game drive times, sightings were a bit down to luck! We were very lucky, and saw Leopard, Lion, Elephant, Rhino and Hyena pups playing and eating, plus a host of Antelopes, Zera, Giraffes etc. Probably helped by it being the dry season and wildlife congregating on the waterholes. I can imagine going there in the wet season, and sightings being quite disappointing in the middle of the day.