Khandizwe River Lodge — Hotel in Nkomazi

Our stay at Khandizwe River Lodge was hands-down the most disappointing holiday we have ever had, and our frequency of visits is at least once a year for the past 18 years barring the 2 years of Covid travel bans. Here is why it was a very poor choice: ||||Booking: ||The owner will contact you 2 – 3 weeks before your stay (at this point you already know it is too late to find another accommodation so you might be tempted to ignore the warning signs and red flags like we did - regretfully):||||1. He will ask you if you can pay from an EU / UK account into his EU account and offer you a ‘better rate’… (he says he is a ‘German citizen’ but somehow this payment step is not included in his booking information…)||||2. He will invoice you privately, and you will notice:||the nightly rate has gone up by about 1000 rand a night (the property is not VAT registered and the owner is using the VAT function in booking.com to illegally increase his nightly rate). He will argue that ‘VAT is irrelevant’ and offer no justification for the increase in nightly stay.||||3. He makes up his own exchange rate – he charged us 1 pound to 20 rand when the rate was 1 pound to 24. He will argue that the exchange rate changes ‘all the time’ and that he works off the rate it would have been had he debited your card at the time of the booking (he does not have a credit card debiting facility and on the booking confirmation it states clearly that you will be charged at the time of your stay) ||||4. He will ask you to cancel your booking on booking.com, stating they owe him a lot of money from the COVID pandemic, and he does not want to pay the 15% commission.||||This should already tell you what type of person you are dealing with. Unfortunately, we worried about loosing a viable reservation, as we had booked this well in advance for our wedding, with our family joining us for a week's retreat, and (it seemed to matter at the time) we had already printed the name of the place and the address on our wedding invitations - so regretfully we went ahead in spite of the red flags. ||||Accommodation:||||5. He forgot we were arriving (on our wedding night) and we spent 45 minutes trying to get a hold of him, as the key was nowhere to be found. Once we got a hold of him it was another 45 minutes before we finally accessed the house, only because we looked for the key EVERYWHERE and finally found it (nowhere near where he said it would be). The house was in utter darkness (loadshedding with no provisions made) and clearly not ready for visitors. He offered to ‘buy us breakfast’ (have some bacon and cereals brought to the house) – this was our wedding night…||||6. Loadshedding – up to between 10 and 12 hours a day (as was the case during our stay), South Africa takes electricity from one area to supply another. In this property this will leave you with no electricity. All other properties in this type of price range have facilities for this – generators, gas cooking facilities, etc. This property has a couple of outdated rechargeable light bulbs which might give you about an hour’s worth of weak lighting. You will NOT be able to cook, or even make a cup of coffee, unless you go out and buy yourself a gas cooking appliance (as we did). So, the first night was a disaster, and the next day was running around buying lights, and buying cooking appliances. But we got offered ‘breakfast’ with excuses of:||||- Guests steal or break lights. ||- The kitchen will be updated in August (as though that makes it any better)||- He was unable to order a generator as these are out of stock.||- The motto of the property is all about the outdoors (I would agree if we had decided to go camping, at a much cheaper rate)||- He is very ill and unable to attend to the property.||- He has had a very tragic life.||- He has sold the property (and thus really doesn’t care about anything other than making as much off it as he can)||||These excuses and justifications will be delivered in 10 – 15 minute long soliloquies via voice note, with a main focus on how bad his life is and how ill he is – really unloading a lot of information on people who are just trying to have the holiday they paid for, with 99% of what he is saying being unrelated to what you are actually experiencing – so it really is not about you and your stay (which you paid for), but about him and how he can hold on to every penny he overcharged.||||Health and Safety||||7. Fire extinguishers have not been serviced since 2010 / 2011, and some are actually empty (for instance in the braai area where you might arguably need it most)||||8. The border fence between the property is irrelevant – broken to the point that it cannot safely be electrified, never mind act as a barrier between yourself and the surrounding WILDLIFE – you are ON the Kruger National Park...||||9. Wooden structures including the ‘look out point’ (which incidentally looks into a tree) and the balcony have wood rot to the point that you are taking chances using these, wooden furniture is coming apart, so be careful where you sit and check it is safe to do so. The Thatch roof is in disarray, which is interesting particularly given the lack of serviced and safe fire extinguishers.||||10. The room on the outside (and street side) of the property cannot be used by minors (it is the one with twin beds??) as the hallway linking it to the house on the inside is blocked off and full of junk (also a fire hazard). Kids would have to go onto the street side of the property and come in via the main door. So practically, you are paying for 4 rooms but functionally you only get 3.||||11. You will not receive any instruction about the alarm system –‘don’t worry about it, we have not had a problem here in 28 years’ – not the point, and I am guessing by the state of everything else it is simply not working…||||Excuses here were all of the above, plus:|||| - These issues are between him and his insurance company (so no regard whatsoever for you and your safety whilst on his property)|| - None of anything outlined above here will have ‘detracted from the enjoyment of our stay’ – are you kidding!!??|| - If you didn’t like it you could have gone somewhere else (yeah right, again, as stated above, at this point it is well and truly too late to try and find another property of that size for that many people – and we should not have to, if the property had offered what you expected a property at that price to offer and had simply met the descriptions provided on the booking site!!!)||- His email crashed and he is unable to attend to your email||||||If you are paying more than 4000 rand for a night’s stay for this property you are being ripped off, it is NOT in a condition and with facilities you would expect for the rate it is being charged and advertised at. If you pay in Euro or Pound, you will definitively be ripped off. You will NOT see any of your money refunded, and you are well advised to bring all the camping gear you have at home to make...

As returning ex-pats with very high expectations from years of KNP and adjacent reserves, Khandiswe was a fantastic "find" that met all our expectations. The buildings are very well appointed and very tastefully furnished with many touches of Africana throughout. The thatch roof gives it that unique "bush" feel and odour and this, with the aircon throughout, provides a cool relief from the outdoor heat. The gardens are a great setting for barbecues/braais in the Lapa area and the pool was magical. We spent hours sitting at the garden fence watching the river and KNP 30 meters away. Highlights: plush, spacious and indulgent living areas; bushbuck entering the garden and coming within 2 metres of us; elephant grazing 5 meters from us; hippos wallowing below us; birdlife and bush sounds; lions chasing impala across the river from us; tranquility; great comms by the owner Top tips: bring a powerful torch for night-time game viewing across the river; top up on mozzie spray and room spray for the odd creepy crawly; avoid town centre - a bit dodgy. Improvements: perhaps let guests know that a domestic helper would enter the house unannounced in the morning! Overall, an amazing experience and a lot more comfortable and luxurious than anything in KNP itself - day trips into KNP were easy and just as rewarding for game enthusiasts, with a "livestream" game viewing opportunity 24/7 right in front of your accommodation. Well done Khandiswe -...

We stayed at this property from 22nd Aug-2 September 2022. The property is lovely although some updating is required. However, we woke at 0799 every day to constant noise of power tools from a building project next door, it was so unbearable we couldn't use the garden until 430pm when the workmen went home. We reported it to the owner on the first day and he said he was unaware however I do not believe this is true. He promised he was a man of his word and would compensate us when we arrived home- it is now 6weeks and he has ignored all correspondence and continues to rent this property KNOWING there is a building project ongoing next door. I would advise anyone against booking this property and we feel he has not been honourable. Out last family holiday was ruined and he did not offer money back at the time so it was difficult for us to move. We paid £4k in flights to get to this supposedly peaceful spot...