Name: Khandizwe River Lodge
Address: 17 Visarend Street Malelane 1320,Visarend Street, Malelane, Malelane, Malelane, 1320, South Africa
Rating: 9

Air conditioning

Smoke-free property

Heating

Washing machine

Garden

Terrace

Patio

All Spaces Non-Smoking (public and private)

Outdoor furniture

General

Non-smoking rooms

Room service

Fridge

Cable TV

Minibar

Hairdryer

Shower/Bathtub

Bathtub

Shower

Bathrobe

Linens

Toiletries

Rooms

Ironing

Laundry

Safe-deposit box

Services and amenities

Microwave oven

Coffeemaker

Kettle

Meals

Free Wi-Fi

Internet

German

English

Languages Spoken

Barbecue grill(s)

Recreation

Free parking

Parking

Swimming pool

Outdoor pool

Beach/pool towels

Pool and beach

Pets Not Allowed

Pets

Location

At the hotel

Room amenities

Malelane Airport

Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport

Komatipoort Airport

Nelspruit Airport

Skukuza Airport

Khandizwe River Lodge

Malelane

child-bed

child-bed-fee

external-private-bathroom

private-bathroom

shared-bathroom

10-beds

11-beds

12-beds

13-beds

14-beds

15-beds

16-beds

17-beds

18-beds

19-beds

2-beds

20-beds

21-beds

22-beds

23-beds

24-beds

25-beds

26-beds

27-beds

28-beds

29-beds

3-beds

30-beds

31-beds

32-beds

33-beds

34-beds

35-beds

36-beds

37-beds

38-beds

39-beds

4-beds

40-beds

5-beds

6-beds

7-beds

8-beds

9-beds

king-bed

queen-bed

limited-time

lounge

treatment

no-window

bay-view

bosphorus-view

canal-view

city-view

courtyard-view

garden-view

golf-view

harbour-view

inland-view

lake-view

land-view

mountain-view

ocean-front

ocean-view

oceanside

panoramic-view

park-view

partial-ocean-view

partial-sea-view

partial-view

pool-view

river-view

sea-front

sea-view

street-view

sunrise-view

sunset-view

water-view

with-view

annex

basement

main-building

1-bedroom

2-bedrooms

3-bedrooms

4-bedrooms

5-bedrooms

6-bedrooms

not-guaranteed

wired-internet-access

smoking

sauna

duplex

safe

mini-bar

breakfast-for-1

breakfast-for-2

pets-allowed

wi-fi

kitchen

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 your stay work.

Not recommended: Completely Overpriced, and not as advertised

A perfect place to escape life's pressures and relax.

The house offered everything we needed and more. 

The location is amazing. It's ideally situated close to an entrance to the Kruger National Park - making it the perfect base for day trips. And the  garden backs onto the Crocodile River ( overlooking the Kruger National Park) where we were able to sit on the veranda and watch hippos play on the opposite bank. 

Peter was the perfect host and couldn't have been more helpful.

We loved our time at Khandizwe. and very much hope to return again in the near future.

Wonderful stay

The Lodge and our stay exceeded our expectation by far. Highly recommended. This is a classy yet rustic villa with excellent accommodation and is the perfect getaway to see the Big 5 from the verandah

Highly recommend!

What can I say? Our family trip to the Lowveld and our stay at this Lodge was more than we could ever have dreamed of! We felt very comfortable in this very large, beautifully furnished villa.

The children had a wonderful time in the pool, viewing elephants and Hippos just meters away.

The views in general across the Crocodile River into Kruger Park are spectacular. We spotted some sneaky hyenas in the tall grass alongside the river and quite a few giraffes made their way to drink from the river. 

We wish that our stay could have been longer and we will most definitely miss being awoken to the cry of the Fish Eagle.

We will be back!



An incredible experience

We definitely  left a part of our hearts at this amazing establishment! One cannot really put into words to describe the excellent accommodation, location and breath taking views from this Paradise. Thank you for a truly wonderful experience!

Paradise on Earth

Our second time in this house and it didn’t disappoint! The location and the view are out of this world, the house is in Safari style (some might say it’s outdated but it is in perfect harmony with the surroundings) which we like very much and the decoration is beautiful. (See the pictures in Pauli’s review) The game comes up to the house and you are right on the crocodile river with a view of Kruger. You never know what’s going to pop out of the bushes. Also the garden ( thanks Armando!) and swimming pool are a big bonus. The owner, Peter, goes out of his way to make sure you’re comfortable and calls you to ask if there are any questions or problems. (He lives 2000km away). Also the house is very clean. Rosie and Nancy are doing a great job. I can’t recommend this house enough. Thanks Peter for another great stay at your place!

Another great stay at Khandizwe!

What a beautiful lodge, near the Crocodile river! We loved our stay there, the breakfast was good from Rose, and diner we made ourselves in the nice kitchen.
The view is amazing all day long, and while splashing  in the pool an elephant walked through.

So nice and quiet, just sit and relax in the garden. 

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 and it was not.

Do not book this property- there is a building site next door!!

Please be aware that the host requires payment in cash or a transfer to a personal foreign bank account, something we were only informed of the day before check-in. 

SVP soyez vigilants : voir ci dessus le message : il s'est produit la même chose pour moi 
Un autre commentaire identique  sur booking.com

Mauvaise expérience

The villa is spacious and luxurious (although in need of maintenance in several areas), the garden is lovely and the view over the Crocodile River is just spectacular. Unfortunately there is extensive construction going on next door starting from 07:30am with banging, many workers talking loudly, and ear-splitting tile grinding. Although this is beyond the control of the host, he was aware of it and should inform guests beforehand - either offering some discount or giving guests the option to cancel without penalty. There was also a discrepancy between the check in time provided on the booking.com site and the time we were told is the ‘property’s policy’. Please be aware that the host requires payment in cash or a transfer to a personal foreign bank account, something we were only informed of the day before check-in. Sadly our expectations of a peaceful and uncomplicated stay here were not realized.

Khandizwe River Lodge

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