Kayleigh W

Tala Game Reserve Anniversary Getaway Disappointment

Last year, my partner and I had booked a stay at Tala Game Reserve at the Paperbark lodge (The Wilderness explorer package) to celebrate our 5 years. I have emailed Tala, Dream Resorts and posted a Google Review with no response. So HelloPeter it is. On arrival we were greeted by extremely pleasant ladies who assisted us with checking in and set the tone for what we had hoped to experience. We were informed that we had been upgraded to Leadwood Manor House to which we were shocked but so excited because we had never stayed in a higher end/luxury lodge - we wanted to book there but the price was out of our reach. Arriving at a seemingly deserted Leadwood Manor, we had to walk around to find someone to help us, we found one of the waitresses in a dark corner of the dining area and she informed us the manager would be back shortly. She took our names and showed us the room we were in. What a beautiful room it was. The perfect looking bath, the deck, the immaculate looking bed (albeit there were a few nigglybits in the room, like a cracked- poorly patched up sink and a crack in the glass door- all things we could overlook). We placed our bags and went to explore. The manager finally arrived, he never greeted us or introduced himself, but made sure he was available to the non-South African guests. We were never asked by any of the staff if we would like tea, coffee or even just water (this only happened when we were at dinner or at breakfast). We were never informed of game drive times or other activities on offer. We decided to rather go sit on the deck in our room, as we didn't feel comfortable or relaxed as we were plainly ignored by the staff. It was clear that the cushions on our rooms deck chairs had not been brushed off or cleaned in a while. However the tranquility and view from the deck tried to make up for it. I decided to run a bath. There was no hot water, the water ran less than luke warm. By the time the bath was full enough to climb in it had already cooled down. We boiled the tiny little kettle 3 times so I would have a tiny bit of warmth- this dissipated quickly so it was really just a waste of water. Later in the evening, after dinner my partner got into the shower and was greeted by only cold water. No length of time of running the water allowed it to heat up. I am sure other guests must have struggled with it too. Dinner felt like a lucky packet draw, starters were decent (although I'm not a fan of bitter pale lettuce -a personal preference). The mains was a disaster for my partner, being a grown man he would have preferred a portion that didn't resemble that of a toddlers- particularly considering the prices. He ordered the lamb curry, which arrived in a tiny little bowl, a few lamb cubes sprinkled with a bit of curry sauce and regular short grain rice (although the menu stated Basmati), and there was no poppadoms as stated by the menu either. We understand that sometimes the kitchen runs out of supplies and being more remote, it can be difficult to restock. However this was never communicated and he may have decided to rather get something else. Dessert was ok, the cheesecake was still frozen, very clear it was not freshly made. My steak, mash and cheese sauce were great- I cannot complain at all about this. The waitress might have been new to waiting or to hospitality, but there were things that I wouldn't have expected from a waitress at a lodge. When ordering the mains she asked what sides I wanted with the steak, the low light and tiny menu and light coloured writing made reading it extremely difficult. I didn't remember seeing a place where it listed the sides, so I asked her what the sides were and she told me to look in the menu (I would imagine that the sides don't change regularly, so surely it is easy enough to relay the list?). Then when she would clear the plates from our table, she would go to the other couples table and place our dirty plates on their table to stack up their plates and take them to the kitchen. We were lucky enough to not have someone else's dirty plates placed on our table though, so a plus for us. Potentially, the team just need to do a basic hospitality course. After dinner we headed to bed in the hopes of getting an earlier start to get some activities in before breakfast and check out. Unfortunately, there was a wedding party having dinner whose party and celebrations continued well past 10pm- I am not going ruin someone's good time, let alone a wedding. However, the sound travelled from the dining area straight into our room, I dare not think of the sound that our neighbours closer to the dining area had to endure. But having some consideration for all your guests is important, and there seemed to be no attempt to ask the group to be considerate of the other guests and drop the noise levels. So we went to sleep much later than we planned. We were then awoken at around 5am to the clanking and screeching of tables and chairs (in what I can only imagine was a rearrangement of the wedding table into the original setting). We were also not informed that there would be a wedding group present- generally they're noisy and are there to celebrate. We would have likely opted to rather stay elsewhere. We headed to breakfast, which based on our experience thus far, was surprisingly good. No complaints at all. Unfortunately, the weather was not great but having a welcoming and pleasant place to stay would have made up for this. Which it didn't. To say that our much anticipated, special occasion trip was severely underwhelming is an understatement. Having saved up for this trip (I work in conservation) and having taken time off work the disappointment was unbelievable. Never have I disliked a getaway as much as this trip.