Chobe Bush Lodge

We stayed here on a Riviera Tour instead of the Safari Lodge, rooms were spacious & just as you'd expect with beautiful mosi nets around the bed, not great views from our room but occasionally the resident wart hog family walked by. ||I must compliment the restaurant food from al la carte with local wild dishes like Kudu (like a steak) so tender & Crocodile tail or their buffet plus we also had Christmas pudding & sticky toffee pudding, delicious.||There is a small shop by the reception area but there is a big souvenir shop down by the entrance gate which no one seem to know about.||It was a great stay here & there is a very good though not easy to find cocktail bar down by the waters edge, you definitely need insect repellent spray but I was still bitten a lot.

My two-night stay at the Lodge was arranged via my National Geographic tour of Southern Africa. The Lodge is very nice and quite modern. It's located very close to Chobe National Park and is right on the Chobe River, adding to the convenience. So close, in fact, that I regularly saw a herd of impalas from my balcony, with kudu and wart hog sightings on the grounds at other times. The rooms were clean and comfortable and quiet. The Lodge has an excellent restaurant and the food and drink were also very good. The staff was helpful at every turn. We had our first dinner at an outdoor area that was quite unique. I enjoyed my stay and would certainly return.

I would happily recommend any traveller stay at Chobe Bush Lodge. The rooms were spacious, clean, and had incredible views of the Chobe river. The staff were attentive and friendly and the activities were amazing! We were able to participate in game drives, an evening boat cruise, and fishing. We were particularly impressed by our game drive guides Kaseman, Nature, and Twist who were incredible at spotting wildlife and educated us on the various flora and fauna within Chobe National Park.

Interesting place and very clean. Rooms spacious with all the amenities. Staff was great except for the a la cart restaurant. No service for 20 minutes then another 30 minutes to get our drinks. Never did get the water we asked for. Food was Ok in both the buffet and a la cart area. A sunset cruise was enjoyable but the guide needs to brush up on his English. Very difficult to understand

I cannot fault the Chobe Bush Lodge. The lodge itself, the location and the service were absolutely great. The offer of activities and options cater for all. The responsiveness of the staff is excellent, dinner experiences were beautiful, the game drive we took was another highlight of our trip. I would gladly stay there again.

An amazing place to experience Chobe from both land and water! The people are so welcoming and really care about providing their guests with a top quality experience. From our hostess to each of the guides and the sharing of their knowledge of the animals and the land was incredible! An experience of a lifetime!!

Our Bush Lodge was excellent - we stayed here for 4 days, the rooms were lovely, all staff were helpful, If you stay here as all inclusive you can choose as many of the activities as many times as you like, this includes the morning/afternoon game drives, there were lots of other things to do including a boat trip up the Chobe river and going to a Namibian village (great experience). We would recommend the Bush Lodge as a great place to see the highlights of a safari.

We stayed for three nights at the Chobe Bush Lodge and there’s lots to commend it. The food is very good. Breakfast is served in a restaurant by Reception, which at lunchtime and in the evening become a la carte restaurants. All the meals we had had plenty of choice, was of very good quality and generous in terms of portions. The service was excellent. You can also eat in the evening in a bush camp style setting near the river, it is a buffet, again with lots of choice. |Our room was very comfortable, with views over the lawns towards the pool. We saw warthogs, banded mongoose, bush buck and impala while we were there. The bed was very comfortable, there was a fan and good air conditioning, good WiFi, a separate bathroom area where the sink and bath was at the back of the room, separated by a curtain from the bedroom, with a separate toilet and shower. Water temperature and flow could be inconsistent, especially at busy times. The room also had a safe, luggage storage, TV with international channels, full length mirrors, complimentary water, full length mirror, lots of sockets and a wonderful welcome gift of Amarula, biscuits, nuts, fudge and biltong. Housekeeping was very good. The room was very clean, the turndown unobtrusive and if you want ice, they are happy to deliver to the room. When we had requested ice a couple of times, they brought us a fridge which was a tremendous bit of thinking and very much appreciated. The only downside to the housekeeping was that the toiletries were not replaced at any stage of our three night stay which was odd.|Portering services are good and reliable. Check out was smooth and efficient but check in felt very rushed and the reception was always busy. This was because the sister hotel, the Chobe Safari Lodge was being renovated, so although their rooms were open, their restaurants, pool and reception were closed, and all services run through the Bush Lodge. This made the former areas constantly busy, and as the pool was small, and reception and restaurants of limited size they were always near full capacity at busy times. We were not warned prior to arrival. The Receptionists at times seemed brusque and unhelpful as a result. Our key cards failed one morning, as did the other people on our tour. When my wife asked them to sort the key cards out, a simple task, the receptionist was rather offhand and blamed us for keeping the cards near a phone or other cards. We didn’t do this and with all our tour's cards simultaneously failing this obviously was not the reason why the cards failed but she was determined to blame us. I also asked to borrow a pen at one stage and was told one could not be spared! Again, I thought was poor service and the attitude of the desk staff dismissive, bordering on rude and unhelpful. |During our stay we had the services of a fantastic guest relations representative, Baaky (apologies if I have spelt this incorrectly). He was of immense help sorting out dinner reservations, luggage pick-ups, aircraft times, boat safaris and game drives, and answered our constant questions at mealtimes. His service was great. He was particularly good when our safari boat broke down, which was no one’s fault and gave us an anecdote for home. It was a minor inconvenience, but Baaky did all he could to ensure that the experience did not ruin our enjoyment of the trip. The smaller boats are much nicer than the bigger boats. Most of the guests at the Lodge are part of groups so numbers of groups can vary from big to small.|The activities desk in reception was very efficient. We booked at short notice a boat trip to see the Kazungula Bridge. This was no issue, and the trip was very enjoyable with an expert guide. We went on several trips with the Chobe Bush Lodge, game drives and Chobe boat tours, the guides were very good and we saw a wide variety of wildlife. The Lodge is only a five-minute drive to the Chobe National Park so you can maximise your viewing time and have minimal travel time to see the wildlife. Next door to the Chobe Bush Lodge is a shopping mall with an electronics store (great if your charging lead fails and you need a replacement which is what happened to us), supermarket and banks. This is very handy. There is a popular curio shop on site and stall with souvenirs across the street.|Overall, the Chobe Bush Lodge is very good as a base to visit the National Park, but there are small parts of their customer service experience that are excellent, but reception service needs to be more consistent in their service. Hopefully it will improve when the Safari Lodge renovations end.