Eva

Jan 11, 2025

Great mountain crew, horrible office staff

My mountain team was amazing. Meru is done as a private hike and I had my guide, 2 porters, cook and a waiter as my team. The team was great, everybody was really friendly and I was happy with their service. My guide Philip offered to carry my daypack for the summit and asked me bunch of other times if I need a help carrying it. He was helping me the whole time so much with all different things like holding my poles, taking stuff out of my daypack etc. The food was delicious and more than I could eat. The waiter was bringing me bowl with hot water every morning and after every hike, plus a hot tea, always asking me how I was, really friendly and accomodating all my requests. The office people, though, was a completelly different experience. I was mainly dealing with a guy called Hasim. Bunch of messages and emails unaswered, sometimes I had to ask a few times about something to dig the answer out of them. Chaoting and disorganized, for example he told me a hotel I would stay it, while I got an email with a different info a week after. The hotel was Maru View Lodge and google maps shows 2 hotels with the same name. So I asked which one it was and surelly he told me the wrong one. I asked where I can keep my valuables and he told me to ask the hotel that they must have a safe. So he basically didnt even know if there was a safe place to keep my valuables there. The rooms in the hotel are all by a wall next to a road and I heard every single car and motorbike going by and after I ordered a pork meal from their menu and they brought me beef claiming it is pork and a chef and then even the owner herself came and gave me an attitude about that I booked myself another hotel and left. I requested a refund for the hotel which I was promissed to be processed and comfirmed through an email while I was at the mountain and that never happend. So while the mountain team was nothing but amazing from the beginning to the end I would never book with Zara again.