We reserved a package safari + accomodation in St. Lucia guest house, so I will split my review by 2:
1) St. Lucia guest house: simply great! Very nice and professional Staff; Rooms are very confortable, fully furnished and provided with a/c. Breakfast is served in the accomodation garden: outside breakfast hours there is a common area managed according to an “Honesty Pick Up List” to be paid separately with both food and drinks availabe on a 24/7 basis. Overall it is an excellent accomodation with better than expected rooms and excellent staff.
2) Safari (s.c. 2 nights package): it consists in 3 safaris during light hours and a night safari. Daily safari envisaged: boat trip to spot Ippo, full day safari in Hluhluwe Umfolozi Game Reserve and iSimangaliso Wetland Park natural reserves, night (after sunset) safari in iSimangaliso Wetland Park. The after sunset safari proved to be the better one, with higher number of spotted animals and a wider variety. During all the safaris the rangers proved to be very friendly, flexible and full of understanding of the guest expectations: Sky tryed his best to let us spot big fives and Kyle provided very insightful anectodes about for African Birds. We benchmarked with the guests using other travel agents and we had by far the best safari experience. Heritage provided us breakfast, food (home made) and beverage (including soft drinks) of a very good quality (taking into accout the overall outside conditions) and everything was tidy, environmental friendly and properly stored.
Two closing remarks:
1) The staff of Heritage T&S Back Office proved to be really precise and efficient in solving our organization problems (thanks Bev for arranging the Shuttle from and to Durban) and no unexpected or unquoted expenses popped up (e.g. other places in SA asked us for undisclosed bank transactional costs or last minute fx rates adjustments).
2) The ranger that assisted us during the different safaris proved to be real professionist (they were all officially licensed), with real understanding of the natural environment and really motivated to provide a great experience.
I strongly suggest St. Lucia town as a base and Heritage Tours and Safaris for having a safari in the KZN area