My wife and I recently traveled to the Protea Hotel Shangri-la. We were meant to stay for two nights at this establishment. We chose the Protea as we were hoping to spend the days at the Aventura Forever Resort in Bela Bela (Warmbaths). We were led to believe that this hotel was actually quite close to the resort. The hotel indeed advertises as such. Upon arriving, it soon became clear this was not the case. In fact, the hotel was 23km from Bela Bela. In addition, the last 3km from the hotel consisted of a dirt road. We were almost reluctant to enter the resort's unbeaten track.
When we entered the resorts compound, we were greeted by a troop of monkeys, and lodge style accommodation. The staff was friendly however and led us to our room. The room was of a good size, and equipped with a fridge, microwave, utensils and dishes. The bed was large and comfortable. The bathroom consisted of a toilet, sink and shower. The bathroom looked clean, however on closer inspection we found mold growing on the floor of the shower. This was most distressing. The lock on the door was also not very reassuring as only one of the two locks worked.
To eat, we ordered room service, which while having a limited selection, was actually quite tasty. While we planned to spend the days in the Forever Resort, we would have been hard pressed to find things to do at this resort.
The following morning, we were awakened to a buzzing noise in the bathroom, which turned out to be a wasp. This was despite having all the windows closed. We later found a wasp nest just outside the set of rooms we were staying in.
We also found that they had cleaned our car without our permission. While we were glad to have the dirt from the dirt road taken off the car, it was quite an unpleasant surprise that we had not been asked in any form.
Having had enough, we checked out after only one night, giving up the night we had already spent for. We would not return to such a place again.