All round excellence! The team at Vuyani, accommodation, food, facilities, service and overall experience surpassed all expectations! 100% recommend to anyone wanting to do a safari. The Blue Canyon and Kruger activities were also excellent.
Our family of 8 stayed in the VIP Marula Villar for 9 days from 1st July 2024
The Villar is set alone from anywhere else and has its own pool, butler, cook and staff who went above and beyond making our stay one of the best experiences of our lives.
Having previously been on many Safaris throughout Africa, the wildlife viewing has to be amongst some of the best animal encounters I have ever experienced.
Our guide (David) and our tracker (Steve), made sure we saw the Big 5 (and even the Ugly 5) many times over.
They were extremely professional and informative and taught us so much about the animals, eco system, flora, and even the history and folklore of the local area, and South Africa in general.
They were able to identify every bird, insect, animal, animal track etc. plus they found us the most amazing places to stop for our morning tea and coffee and evening ‘sundowners’
The staff at the Villar were exceptional.
We had our own butler (Russell), cook (Ephraim), Nkateko (Kbless), Skenera and Redolf.
The food was excellent and extremely varied, in fact it was 5-star dining at every meal.
They also put on an amazing meal with balloons, cakes and candles etc for my son and granddaughter’s birthdays.
The staff and management genuinely care about the environment as well as the guests.
Thank you everyone for making our family holiday an unforgettable experience.
There are many positive things about the Vuyani, with probably the highlight being the staff. They are extremely welcoming and attentive and nothing is too much trouble. The lodge itself is nice and comfortable. Something people don’t mention in the reviews is that everyone sits together for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We enjoyed this aspect, but if you aren’t that way inclined, it’s probably good to know!
I’d say that although the lodge is of a high standard, it is probably starting to age a little. One of the families we spoke to had constant WiFi issues and also issues with their water supply. We didn’t have any of these problems!
The food served is of a good standard and plentiful, similarly they are very generous with drinks etc.
Our small gripe really was around the condition of the safari jeeps. They are certainly well worn and have intermittent issues. None of the dials in the drivers side work and we did run out of fuel probably 1km from the lodge. Rather than send out some cars from the lodge (5 mins of a job) they sent another jeep from the river lodge (the other side of the park) and we sat around for 30 minutes waiting.
No big issue.
It seems there was perhaps some sort of issue between lodge owners as we were unable to visit certain areas that were previously accessible in the park. It was a shame as there were sightings posted on the radio of animals we didn’t see (such as the leopards) and we were unable to go there. Not the fault of the guides - they were excellent!
In summary it was a really enjoyable stay and I’d recommend it. A little bit of extra investment would make it extra special.
I am struggling to find the words that completely sum up our 6 night stay at Vuyani so put quite simply - it was everything and so much more than expected for our first visit to Africa and on Safari!
From the moment the lovely gentle man that is Peace collected us from the airport we felt welcomed, Vuyani Lodge is a very very special place, we stayed in one of the 2 presidential suites but also took a peek in one of the honeymoon suites and they are equally as lovely, the food was excellent with plenty of choices for breakfast, lunch and dinner but for us hands down our holiday was made perfect by Jannie our safari drive guide and Peace the drive tracker, Jannie is one of the most genuine authentic people I have ever met, he passionately cares about all animals big or small, he’s incredibly knowledgable about them and their behaviours, he’s also very very funny and went above and beyond to ensure our game drives were fantastic and for us he 100% made our time at Vuyani utterly memorable, so please completely ignore a previous review as it’s complete nonsense. Peace is such a gentle soul who again made our trip so memorable - we will definitely be returning to Vuyani as soon as possible. Thank you to everyone at Vuyani, with extra special thanks to Jannie, Peace, Funky and Witness… you are all awesome and a credit to the team Vuyani
Wildlife - we saw everything, the top 5 and so much more, we did the day trip to Kruger and I would highly recommend doing that if you have time when there and we met some wonderful like minded other guests who we really enjoyed spending time with…
I dont know where to start to express just how much we enjoyed the whole Vuyani experience.
Every detail made our stay everything we wanted and more.
The 3 of us stayed in the presidential suite even with the 2 extra beds there was plenty of room .
We loved the sunken bath and the hot tub on the decking, we sat out there every day and watched a number of different animals wandering past so close to us.
The game drives were amazing and were different each time we went out.
Uyai and chris did a fab job of keeping us safe and making sure we saw every animal there was to see ,even if they were very hard to find at times they never gave up.
Chris's hot chocolates were the best and much appreciated when the sun had gone down and it started to get chilly.
The food at the lodge was plentiful and varied and very tasty.
Allanah was very helpful and attentive and went out of her way to fix any issues we had including plaiting my Daughters hair!!
We met some lovely people who were staying at the time too.
I can see now why many people return again and again to Vuyani and we will be doing so too .
Thankyou for making our family holiday an unforgettable experience
One tip definitely take lots of layers if you are visiting in the winter the temperature went from 2 degrees to 30 degrees in the same day!!
