Ongava Lodge

Beautiful cabins positioned well away from others.. great big bed with gorgeous mosquito net fabulous outdoor shower ( indoor too should you so choose)… great bathroom products, biscuits and plentiful water. Huge open deck perched over the valley looking down to the waterhole. Great staff friendly and welcoming. A very nice dinner and breakfast. The best thing about the lodge is the hide… a fantastic opportunity to sit quietly and view the wildlife from only a several few meters away. In total we saw 14 black Rhinos!

Ongava Lodge provided a great entry to Etosha National park - plus the experience of seeing animals on the Ongava lands. Our guide Sylvanus was great company and did a wonderful job finding animals and giving us lots of information. The accommodation was lovely and spacious with the wonderful advantage of viewing animals from our chalet. All staff were welcoming and we also enjoyed having the pool to cool off in. We highly recommend Ongava for a great experience getting up close to lots of animals.

It really is hard to overstate how impressed we were with our experience staying at Ongava. Food, service and staff were excellent. The main lodge is stunning and in a great spot which provides excellent views across an expansive reserve. The main watering hole with the photographic hide provided an unmissable opportunity for viewing and photographing wildlife up close. Our room was very luxurious and impeccably clean. The absolute highlight however was the game drives (especially the sundowners) and on foot elephant and rhino approaches with our guide Salathied - a true gent who was super knowledgeable, accommodating and provided us with an experience we’ll treasure and remember forever. Thank you Ongava and Salad for making our safari holiday 😊

There is so much potential for this lodge to become quite perfect, but it is not unfortunately. And it would all be forgiven if this was a mid range lodge, but it is quite an expensive luxury lodge so expectations are just higher. Let’s start with the positives: fantastic location, waterhole with viewing hole is great and the food was nice. Our guide Kapona was also quite good. Now for the points of improvements: we got the impression that staff is just not trained properly. Although nobody was not nice, everyone lacked the friendliness and smiles we are used to for african lodges in general. We really had the feeling most staff did not want to be there. It is just completely lacking the nice details of hospitality of nice lodges. Some examples (some are of course very minor details, but it just adds up): - wet towels after game drives are provided, but put on a pilar. Nobody is there to welcome you back, ask how it was and to hand the towel to you (or make sure nobody puts a used one on top of the others). Sometimes there were not enough. - dietary requirements are being asked on check in but completely ignored afterwards (we send back food on 3 different occasions) - the towels to dry your hands in the public restrooms were not refilled often enough. - The public restrooms did not lock causing some awkward situations with other guests. - At some point one of the staff members accidentally spilled lemonade over a camera. Apologies were given, but we had to ask for a towel to dry the camera and no manager came to ask what happened. -We saw some guests arriving looking around bewildered because nobody was in the restaurant to greet them. - an absolute no go for me: staff was looking at some videos on their phone with the sound on in the guests area. This is very annoying if other guests do this (earphones people..) but just a no go for staff in my opinion. - and probably the worst thing: one of our party members fell down walking to the car when we were leaving. We were in the parking lot for about 15 minutes taking care of him. Nobody came to help.