Aquila Private Game Reserve — Hotel in Breede Valley Local Municipality

We absolutely loved the safari and our guide, but the admin and accommodation let the experience down. ||Our booking experience was painful! I messaged and asked if they had wheelchair accommodation and if so that would be great, but if not we could cope. They came back and said it was unavailable for the dates I wanted, so I asked for a different type of room and they kept coming back saying the accessible room was unavailable. I ended up getting a bit cross and saying I had said in my first email we could cope if it was not available. They then only booked one night, not two, despite the fact I had always said we wanted two nights. Getting this sorted and confirmed was also hard work. I have regularly stayed in hotels and this definitely was less efficient than hotels I have tried to book, and made me a bit concerned about what would happen when we arrive.||When we arrived we checked in just after 1 to avoid the queue, so missed the welcome drinks sadly, therefore we went straight to lunch, which was not a great start. Service was slow despite we were there at the end and most people had left, we had to wait ages for our drinks order to come, and she had got every drink wrong.||We checked into our rooms, which were basic but clean and comfortable then had some time to wait before the tour. The premier cottage had a stunning view across the land||We had a private tour and that was fantastic. Our guide Nigel was so knowledgeable and interesting and really wanted us to enjoy our time with him. We had him for all 3 of our tours and truly could not have asked for anything more from him. Including holding Rhino poo which horrified my daughter, so he gave some to her to hold!! Cannot say enough good things about Nigel and our experience with him. We had people aged from 10 to 70 and we all thoughts he was brilliant.||There is basically nothing to do in the day between the safaris other than sunbath, swim and spa. My daughter had her hair braided which she loved, but kids under 16 cannot use the spa, so that option was not available to us. We registered for the junior ranger program as there was nothing else to do in the day, and we thought it would be interesting and different, but it turned out to be another safari, which was not what we thought it would be. It also did not say there was a cost for it, we did not know until it appeared on the bill. They really need to communicate better what it is and that there is a cost.||Also the dining situation is not brilliant, in busy times there is not enough tables for everyone, so we had to wait quite a while until a table was free. The buffet is quite chaotic, however the food was very tasty!||The lift to the bar upstairs was broken, so if you are disabled and the weather is not great, there is not a bar to sit in. Fortunately we could carry our son up the stairs, but it definitely was not ideal. And it was too cold to sit outside. Also the path to the karoo cottages suddenly stopped and was full of holes and gravel, and not lit, so at night it was dark and harder than it needed to be! Premier and family cottages do not have this issue.||If the weather is good you can sun bath and go in the pool, and there is a small child area, but other than that there is literally nothing. Two of our group ended up leaving and driving around the surrounding area as there was nothing to do at the hotel. I would strongly recommend just staying one night as you would check in, do a safari, get up in the morning, then another safari, breakfast and then head off. You would not waste a day hanging around a hotel.||The safari is perfect for short trips as all the animals are close by, so you go round the same area on each trip. We were staying an hour outside Cape Town, and this seemed like the best option as it had the big 5. I am still glad we went and we did love the safari, so I would recommend someone goes for a night, but improvements...

TLDR; it was okay but if I could go back in time, I would have spent more time searching & planning a better option.

We spent an overnight stay at Aquila, there was some good aspects, but a whole lot of bad too.

Starting with the good, the reserve is more of a “rehabilitation centre” so with that said, your chances of seeing the Big 5, your chances are quite high, no matter the weather. If this is all you care about, then it’s an alright place to consider. Do not expect much authenticity, however. In addition to this the food was pretty tasty. On an overnight stay, you will have lunch, dinner, and breakfast. All three buffet meals had plenty of decent food options.

The not so good: the rooms are quite dated. I can’t speak for the new deluxe cottages however the family cottage we were in was impractical at best. The aircon only blows into the main part of the cottage (down to the king bed) and the upper level is completely in air conditioned. As it’s close to the roof, it is barely breathable in heat or humidity. Furthermore, the stairs are quite steep and not very deep. If you have children travelling with you, be mindful that rest may be difficult, and bathroom trips in the middle of the night are basically an impossible task.

If you are doing an overnight stay, there are quite long periods of “free” time. You can use the pool or hit the bar, but other options are significantly limited, unless you are prepared to splurge on the quad bike or horseback safaris, or visit the spa. It feels as though the overnight stay is designed to bore you in between the few activities so you feel more inclined to spend money on alternate experiences. My view of this may be skewed as it rained the days we were there and sitting the pool was not an option. Though uncontrollable, it did leave you time to think about how things could be better organized.

Now for the bad, which in my opinion borders on unacceptable.

Customer service and communication is horrific. We sent between 7-10 emails in the week leading up to our arrival trying to receive more information regarding our transportation, and projected departure and re-arrival times from Cape Town. Not a single one of our emails went answered. I had more luck reaching out to someone through social media than by email. We had difficulty calling from international numbers and had borrowed a locals phone to contact them, only to be dismissed by the phone agent and abruptly hung up on while still trying to get information, the man did not even take our reservation number down to help guide us better.

When organizing transport with Aquila, we were told the driver would contact us. after no contact to even obtain the address we were residing at, we physically went to the head office in Cape Town and received no timelines AGAIN of when to expect contact. Upon calling a final time the day before, we were told the driver would contact us after closing hours the same day, the day before our pickup (which is the day we were calling). The driver never contacted us. The morning of, we had our Airbnb hosts reach out, and we were finally told that the driver was in fact WAITING FOR US ON THE STREET?! Had we not had others contact for us, we would have missed our pickup entirely. Aquila Safari did not provide the correct contact number to the driver and did not give us a contact number for him.

The experience with the driver was something else as well. Every passenger in the van felt unsafe with his driving. Taking downhill mountain turns at double the suggested speed limits.

Based on this experience, I cannot recommend Aquila, and would recommend putting time and resources into researching other safari options to do during your time in South Africa. This place was not worth the headaches...

Aquila Game Reserve

We had such high hopes for this, but it just isn’t what it’s made out to be. We started our day off bright and early and was picked up at 6am to take us to Aquila. The driver arrived and was truly lovely, a real credit to the team!

After about 10 minutes, we got stuck in really heavy traffic then we got a random stop check from the police… obviously this is all out of Aquila’s control, but it meant we arrived 1 hour late. On the journey we were told they would allow for this and give us extra time at breakfast, fantastic!

When we arrived, we checked in and was told we only had breakfast for 20 minutes… little frustrating as that’s normally 1 hour so I found myself really rushing to eat. After 20 minutes we were loaded onto the Safari 4X4 of which I was told to sit away from my girlfriend… this really did frustrate me as I was keen to share these experiences together.

On the safari we did see a whole host of animals which was amazing - but when we pulled up at the Zebra’s and Lions it really had us questionin the morals of this place. The zebra’s looked incredible docile and the Lions are penned in, away from other animals in a pretty small enclosure. Our driver drove right up the Lions, which although gave us a fantastic view of them it didn’t feel natural at all. Rhino’s horns are cut to deter poacher, but our driver didn’t specify what Aquila does with the horns after they’ve cut them?

After just 1 hour of being out we were back at base, but I thought this was a 2 hour safari? So because of the traffic our breakfast and safari got cut massively. We were then fed lunch (which I wasn’t hungry for as we’d just been fed breakfast about an hour prior). We had a few drinks and thought we’d come back to it in shortly when we’re feeling hungry again (when we were supposed to have lunch) but then got told the lunch currently on offer was for the current safari not the ones that had already gone out, so we missed out on lunch.

We had approx 4-5 hours to kill after our safari of just walking around - we went in the pool which was cold and didn’t really look like the pictures. We were told drinks were complimentary with the lunch, but we did in-fact have to pay for this (including for water which was R50 for a small bottle)

We met at 4PM for our driver to take us back to Cape Town. Our group was there for 4 but our driver was no where to be found - I asked some of the staff of which the response was “do you have his number?” No I don’t have the number of the driver for your company. Anyways, it transpired that he’d fallen asleep - we felt sorry for him as it looked like he was massively overworked and he was very apologetic.

Overall the experience isn’t an authentic African Safari - do not come here if you expect that. The pictures you see on social media isn’t like the real thing, we felt like just a number to them rather than paying customers. The staff were frankly pretty unhelpful when asked about anything, we were made to feel like we were just...