Chrislin African Lodge

Lovely spacious room and terrace overlooking the beautiful gardens - someone has some seriously green fingers, the gardens are mature and beautifully planted. Super-comfortable bed and yummy bed linen. Unfortunately the weather was not good to us while we were there, so we didn't have the opportunity to use the pool, which was a shame, as it looked very inviting. Everyone was helpful, we loved the dogs and Rusty the cat (who is clearly omnipotent - she seemed to emerge in every chair at some point during the course of a day, and strolled in to check us out at breakfast time). The property is close to several restaurants and a short drive from Addo National Park. We only ate dinner in the restaurant once, but the food was absolutely delicious and extremely well presented - the restaurant staff were all lovely too. Great breakfast too - we're not big breakfast eaters, but the staff were happy to make us scrambled eggs and (unusually in my experience) unfazed when we said we really really did only want one egg and one rasher of bacon! Sadly, we had to cut our stay short, as we had to return to Port Elizabeth for an appointment, just as the weather was improving!

This is not a dislike, just a suggestion - a couple of big rugs in the restaurant might make the space a little more cosy and would also absorb some of the noise - we found that the combination of lots of glass doors, tiled floors, high ceilings, people, background music and general restaurant 'clattering' really bounced off all the hard surfaces and we slightly struggled to hear each other speak some of the time. Some rugs on the tiled floors would really help to absorb some of that. My only other comment, again not really a dislike, just something to be aware of, was that we had one of the rooms with an interconnecting door to the next room - the first night we had a baby neighbour, who was awake (and letting us all know - her parents for sure!) for quite a bit of the night, and the following night we had neighbours who were playing music or had the TV on (not sure which) quite loudly until quite late. Obviously we were slightly unfortunate in this respect and it's not something the hotel can really change, but if you are a light sleeper, it might be good to book one of the rooms which doesn't have this arrangement.