Our family group of 12 rented out the whole of Tree House for our 6-night stay. This comprises 6 bright, airy and modern en-suite rooms with private balconies, four of which have great sea-views. There is also a large kitchen dining room and outside deck. Obviously this is shared with other users if you don't book out all 6 rooms as we did. The property was spotlessly clean. It is highly recommended - ideal for a large group like ours. The rooms all have modern art works on the wall - these weren't to our taste, but that's a very minor nit-pick. Other accommodation on site includes tents, chalets, dormitories and a camp and caravan site.
Buccaneers is set in a large area of coastal bush, and was pretty quiet for most of our stay. The beautiful beach is a 5-minute walk along the edge of the lagoon to the nearest point - but you can keep walking as far as you want. It was a further 20-minute walk to a tidal pool, which we enjoyed too. Boogie boards are available free of charge, which was great fun in the warm Indian Ocean. I also recommend taking one of the free canoes up the river that leads to the lagoon - very peaceful, and a great way to see birds. Note that the three canoes are not all equally easy to steer!
There is a grocery shop 10 minutes walk away on the other side of the lagoon, while some curios can be bought at reception. There is a restaurant on site for communal evening meals, and a cafe for lunches and breakfast. We mainly self-catered, but the cafe was fine. The outdoor pool under palm trees and weaver bird nests was still a bit cool when we were there in early October, but that didn't put off our kids from making good use of it.
Every Wednesday there is a trip to a local primary school available. I highly recommend this - you get to meet local kids and the staff, and they put on a wonderful half-hour of Xhosa singing. At the end, a donation is expected to the school via Buccaneers - you will not need much persuading to be generous with this!
Other activities which we didn't get round to include visiting a soup kitchen, and surf lessons. Our kids did enjoy the beach horse-riding, which was very reasonable.
The site is set on a slope, and is a short but steep walk from the lower end by the lagoon up to the cafe and reception. This wasn't a problem for us, but might be for others.
My understanding is that having begun 40 years ago as a family holiday location, Buccaneers then changed tack to the student / backpacker market in the 90s. They seem now to have returned to being very well geared towards families, while still retaining some backpacker clientele.
This was the second part of our family holiday from the UK to South Africa. As with our first stop, It exceeded our expectations. it's just a shame that this part of the country is not better known to UK tourists - they don't know what they're missing.
