maodohsiao
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Singita did not disappoint. We squeezed this stay in between attending a friend's wedding in kwaZulu-Natal & Benguerra Island. We ended up wishing we had stayed longer here and spent less time at Benguerra Island. ||The accommodation was spot-on. We had a villa facing the river and saw elephants / buffalos every day we were there from the comfort of the plunge pool. There's a diff food menu daily and the team respected our wishes when we asked for smaller portion. It was clean, it was comfortable, and it almost made us want to stay in our room and not go on the game drives! ||What I will say is that the devil is in the detail and Singita excels at this: a drawing kit in the room, fleece poncho for the colder evening, a hot water bottle for the chilly morning game drive, toiletry kit for when nature calls while we were on a game drive, SPF in the room and in the vehicle, a binocular for each guest... the list goes on. They are all SUCH minute detail that doesn't cost an arm and a leg to prepare; and yet, most of the other lodges never thought to do the same.||While game viewing in Sabi Sands is always good, you sometimes get stuck with people who want different things. We were lucky to not have to share the vehicle with anyone else. Our guide Marc and tracker Golden were AMAZING and delivered almost everything on our wish list -- chief among them: leopards. The 2 of them tracked down 3 different leopards in 3 days. To be able to find elusive cats, and to be able to sit in the peace and quiet of nature to observe them is SUCH a treat and such a highlight. So big thank you for both Marc and Golden for the experience. ||Now, post departure follow up:||My husband was severely bitten by insects while at Singita, ticks and god knows what else. He removed the ticks himself and didn't think much of it as this is what happens when you are in the bush. Once we got to Mozambique, one of the bites started looking rather horrid and his lymp nodes started swelling up. I got worried. I sent an email to an email address I had for Boulders hoping that someone can take a look at the wound. I was very clear that this is not about placing blames, but rather, we just wanted to know if this is a "BAU" bite that is commonly seen in/around the lodge, or if this is something we should perhaps rush to a hospital for. No one ever replied. By the time we got back home, his lymphs were swollen in multiple places. I asked the travel agent for help reaching out to Singita. While waiting to get a response, my husband went to the ER twice with additional symptoms that showed up. We were eventually put in touch with a doctor there 6 days after my first email (which was never responded to) BUT the singita contacts put us in touch with a doctor who is OOO. We got 1 reply from him before he became unreachable so we are kinda back to square 1 again? I mean, thank god it seems like the bite is a common one (seems to be African tick bite fever). Can't imagine what would have happened if this is something more serious. ||For us, I suppose the stay was SO wonderful / so personalized that we had hoped a request like this, even if this is something that's normal for the bush, would be taken with more urgency? And more accuracy? At least connect with someone who hasn't turned on the OOO response? We made it very clear on numerous occassion that we were not looking to place blames bc we understand that this is part of being in the bush. All we wanted was for an expert to guide us with a "ah yes, don't worry" or "tell your city doctor to look / test for a / b/ c and d" This was very disappointing as we expected more from Singita and def dimmered the high we had from the stay. | |a suggestion: maybe Singita can provide an email address that has a SLA of 24H for departing guests in case if they experience anything out of the norm?||To wrap it up: the stay was wonderful and we will be back again even with this whole insect bite incident.