Hammerkop Migration Camp — Hotel in Narok

There are several good and bad points about this camp. For us, unfortunately the bad did outweigh the good.||||Good points:||||1. The location is exceptional.  Close to the river and every chance of seeing hippos and crocodile.  We also saw a lot of other animals close to camp.||||2. The tents are clean and well maintained with a very good shower.||||3. Most importantly, our guide Philip was EXCEPTIONAL.  Without him we would not have seen half of what we saw. However he was not directly associated with the camp, just hired by them to guide us.  The same goes for the hot air balloon safari, this was well organised and incredible but run by another company which operated about 2hrs away from our camp.||||||Bad points:||||1. The worst part of our stay was the evening meals. This is served in a central tent. The food itself was fine, nothing special but nice enough.  The service was very slow and sometimes the food was almost cold.  ||||However, for some reason the staff refused to close the mosquito nets at the front of the tent. So when being fed in the dark with lights above us, hundreds and hundreds of bugs and flies accumulated above us which then fell in the food, on the table, into drinks etc.  Occasionally they would turn off the lights to get rid of them but it did not help. When I asked why they would not shut the nets, they said if the bugs are already in they won't go. So I asked why they don't shut them before it gets dark and was told the door the food was served through would still be open so bugs would still enter. Does it not make sense to have a mosquito net flap or something that can be pushed aside when food enters?! Sure a few flies may still enter but less than we dealt with! ||You're by the water so I expect flies, but this camp deals with this issue daily and I would have expected them to be better at managing the situation so you don't have hundreds of flies in the food. ||||2. There are no mosquito nets over the beds. So unless you want to spend the evening swatting bugs, you must keep the tent closed all day.||||3. Many of the staff speak hardly any English so there is a huge communication barrier. When we were struggling to eat because of the flies in food, for example, we asked for new soup (as ours was untouched, cold and full of bugs) and to eat in our room. "Yes" they said.  Next thing we knew, the next course was served at the table and nobody brought more soup.||||4. There were children in our group and the camp was in no way suitable or geared towards children. Nobody told us this when we were booking even though they knew the children were coming. The food was not child friendly at all and this along with the slow service meant they were restless through dinner.||||||I would not go back to this camp or recommend it to anyone else looking for an enjoyable Mara...

This was a very nice camp with everything we were looking for. However, I must start with a strong word of CAUTION, as we had a very unfortunate "welcoming" to the camp that tainted our initial experience. ||When we arrived to the camp, the manager Morris took a call on speaker phone from his director. We could easily overhear his director state very rudely that they had not received payment from our travel agency, and that we would not be welcome to stay there if we did not provide payment in full. Keep in mind, we had already paid a large sum of money for this camp and we were not informed there was an issue with the payment until we are actually at the camp in the middle of the Masai Mara. We were essentially their hostages and felt like we were being shaken down for thousands of dollars. Why would payment not be confirmed prior to our arrival, so this could be addressed ahead of time? We became upset and reached out to our tour group (Natural World Kenya Safari), who was able to help sort this out within an hour. The way it was handled gave us the impression they were trying to scam us. They claimed they have had issues with our tour group paying them in the past. If that is the case, why would they wait until we are stranded at their camp with no where to go to confirm the payment had gone through, and tell us we would need to make another payment directly to them or find somewhere else to go? This all happened within the first 5 minutes of us arriving to the camp. ||After the unfortunate start to our trip was sorted out, and we were allowed to stay there as planned - everything else that followed was wonderful. We were treated with nothing but kindness once they told us they were able to confirm our payment. The tents were comfortable, clean and well maintained. The food was fantastic. The location was perfect, with our tent overlooking the river were we would see hippos, crocodiles, and baboons from our front porch. We had a fantastic experience overall, but I would be weary to stay there again due to how we were...

This was a very nice camp with everything we were looking for. However, I must start with a strong word of CAUTION, as we had a very unfortunate "welcoming" to the camp that tainted our initial experience.

When we arrived to the camp, the manager Morris took a call on speaker phone from his director. We could easily overhear his director state very rudely that they had not received payment from our travel agency, and that we would not be welcome to stay there if we did not provide payment in full. Keep in mind, we had already paid a large sum of money for this camp and we were not informed there was an issue with the payment until we are actually at the camp in the middle of the Masai Mara. We were essentially their hostages and felt like we were being shaken down for thousands of dollars. Why would payment not be confirmed prior to our arrival, so this could be addressed ahead of time? We became upset and reached out to our tour group (Natural World Kenya Safari), who was able to help sort this out within an hour. The way it was handled gave us the impression they were trying to scam us. They claimed they have had issues with our tour group paying them in the past. If that is the case, why would they wait until we are stranded at their camp with no where to go to confirm the payment had gone through, and tell us we would need to make another payment directly to them or find somewhere else to go? This all happened within the first 5 minutes of us arriving to the camp.

After the unfortunate start to our trip was sorted out, and we were allowed to stay there as planned - everything else that followed was wonderful. We were treated with nothing but kindness once they told us they were able to confirm our payment. The tents were comfortable, clean and well maintained. The food was fantastic. The location was perfect, with our tent overlooking the river were we would see hippos, crocodiles, and baboons from our front porch. We had a fantastic experience overall, but I would be weary to stay there again due to how we were...