Professionally run lodge with well appointed and maintained rooms with management and staff generally willing to go the extra mile to make your stay special.

Grant and Melanie who run the place made us feel very welcome, and we enjoyed our game drives with Rexon and Dylan.

Mealtimes can be pretty exciting with the monkeys constantly launching raids on the buffet table and staff launching pebbles at them in retaliation. Unfortunately, I think that this situation will ultimately end badly and permanently (for the monkeys). But apart from this, the food is excellent, both in terms of quality and variety and you spend all your time at the lodge generally feeling very full.

Please ask your tracker if it would be possible to do a walk in the mornings. It is great fun seeing and hearing the veld without the background noise of an engine and 10 DSLRs clicking away.

This was our 2nd visit to Thornybush but this time it was our honeymoon. We thought maybe it would not be as good as last time (2009) but it was just as good if not better. They made us feel very special and our ranger and tracker new their stuff and found us everything we wanted to see - more than once. . We saw all the Big 5 and more. I still cannot believe how close you can get to the animals - touching distance of a Cheetah eating her kill, elephants wandering past the jeep and so much more. The "rule" of only 2 jeeps per group of animals ensures privacy for them and makes you feel you have the bush to yourself. The food is also excellent and in the evenings if you want to chat, all the rangers are good company. The rooms are lovely, plenty of space, soft towels and lovely toiletries - try the outside shower - it is very invigorating! The only negative was the swimming pool as they did not clean it the 4 nights we were there so too many leaves in it to make it enticing to swim in. My advice is to go in their winter as the weather is cooler but still hot during the day and less foliage to see the animals more easily but take very warm clothes as the mornings particularly are very cold.

Great safari drives, saw the big five in a day. Attentive, polite and personalized service. Excellent meals, both at the lodge and in the bush. Our children, ages 6-12 really enjoyed this and will have great memories for a long time - beats video games by a long shot. There are no safari drives during the middle of the day so you are on your own to relax. The only deficiency is the pool, which is very standard. I suggest staying for two days. Wholeheartedly recommend.

I spent two nights with my girlfriend and parents at Thornybush and I can safely say it is one of the greatest things I have ever done. From the moment we arrived (in fact before we even arrived we had seen giraffes, impalas and monkeys!) the staff were so welcoming and friendly. The rooms are exquisite and the outdoor showers are just the best. The beds are HUGE and incredibly comfortable, you feel like royalty when lying down in them. The lodge itself is in a beautiful setting with a lovely warthog family grazing on the grass and monkeys causing mischief all over the place.

The pièce de résistance is, naturally, the game drives. Our driver Gregg and tracker July worked so hard to find us the animals we wanted to see the most, and when we did find them they were incredibly knowledgeable about each of them which made the trip even more enjoyable. Watching the trackers try and find the animals is as much part of the fun as finding them. You travel in maximum groups of 9 though there were 6 with us (myself, my girlfriend, my parents and another couple staying at the lodge) so the drives feel very personal. They simply look for the animals you request rather than a pre-laid out route which is briliant.

You have two drives per day. One at dawn and one at dusk. This is ideal as the bush seems like a completely different place on each drive, with the dawn drive being my favourite as everything seems so still compared to the later drive when the enviroment seems to start buzzing for the night ahead. The sunsets on the evening drive are uncomparable to any others I have seen on my travels. On the last morning only my girlfriend and I went for the drive as the others decided their beds were just to comfy. This did not deter Greg and July one bit as they still worked so hard to make our morning unforgettable.

On our first night we were treated to an outdoor barbecue on the dried out river bed that the lodge sits next to, surrounded by candles and giant bonfire. As the Lodge only has a maximum of 40 guests the dinners feel really intimate and they made sure there was a vegetarian option for me every evening which was hugely appreciated.

I could not say one bad thing about the place and I will be recommending the lodge to everyone I know. The price might look a bit daunting at first but believe me with everything that's included (you only have to pay for the alcohol) it's a bargain. I have never left a hotel and hugged the staff on my way out before. It felt like leaving good friends behind!