Arusha Villa Karamu Coffee Estate

Gorgeous property with a nice pool. The staff is lovely. Lots of local monkeys and birds to watch in the trees. The food is excellent. Nicely sized room and the hot water in the shower is consistent for main house rooms. Coffee, tea, and water station available for guests at all times.

The walls are thin and not very soundproof in the main house. The WiFi only really works at the pool and even while there, it is fairly slow. Do not count on consistent WiFi.

Adequate breakfast, with options

N/A

The property is set in beautiful and well maintained grounds. The main house is large and airy, and the common areas nicely done. We didn’t use the swimming pool because it was cloudy and cold and the pool is not heated, but it was well maintained. The food for lunch and dinner is very good. Delicious food, well presented. The ground staff, waiters and bar staff were excellent and accommodating. The breakfast needs work. The only hot option was some sad looking eggs, the chickens that laid them so sad that the yolks were grey.

The WiFi is absolutely abysmal. We were looking forward to a couple of days rest and uploading our photos from safari and communicating with our family back home. The WiFi is only available in one common area of the property (not in the rooms or even reception) and is so weak that barely anything is possible. It took 15 mins for my emails to load… We had been in the deep bush with internet 10x better. We were in a farmhouse room, which is detached from the main property. During April-August Arusha is cloudy and cool and quite damp. The farmhouse rooms didn’t have much natural light, there was no heating, the external windows didn’t close properly and the room smelled slightly of damp. When we got into bed to warm up, the sheets also felt slightly damp to touch. Whilst the room looks well presented, this made the feel of the place a bit sad. The bathroom products could do with an upgrade. We don’t necessarily expect something very fancy but the only thing provided was some neon orange or green cheap, chemical hand soap. No shampoo and certainly no conditioner, and I wouldn’t want to use that soap on any sensitive areas! Sometimes small requests seemed a bit of a chore for the general manager/receptionist. For example, we had asked in advance if we could leave our bags whilst we climbed Mount Meru before returning to the property a few days later. When we came to give the bags, it was a big fuss with us leaving them. When we came to pay, we either had to pay with card where they would charge us a 3% fee, or pay in cash but they had no change so we ended up paying extra. When we paid for our second stay after Meru, it was the same story, even though a few days later we had ourselves given them a load of cash with small notes for our first stay.

Beautiful grounds and spacious rooms. Excellent food at the restaurant. Excellent service. Rachel at front desk was very helpful.

45 minute drive from KIA Poor wifi in lounge and restaurant and no guest wifi in rooms. Bath robes should be supplied as the room was cold.