If you're in The Gambia, you should really go there! The surroundings are beautiful, the riverview very pretty and the trip down the mangroves in the early morning spectacular.
But... the place is really rundown, don't expect anything from the rooms, it's just a place to sleep. At night it can be cold and you need an extra blanket, make sure there's one in your room.
The food they served was terrible, never had such a bad meal in my life!

So you MUST go there for one night, enjoy the place for what it makes so special, but make sure you bring some cookies and other foodstuff with you!

The location is stunning, and the boat trip around the mangroves amazing. This place is very run down which is a pity as with a bit of care and attention it would be great.
If you are a nature lover then it is worth a one night stay. It is not a complete write off, and is comfortable enough as a stop over.
Try and travel by boat up and down the river, the south road is a nightmare.
We used the "Hidden Gambia" transport system which never let us down. Being followed by dolphins was a huge plus. The arrival and warm welcome up river at the well managed Bird Safari Camp was a real contrast to this place.
We are please to have visited Tendaba, as being bird watchers, it enabled us to see many unusual species, and appreciate our next point of call.

Such a pity. This could be a great place and possibly was at one time but it's seen better days. It consists of a range of huts and bungalows which must have been quite attractive once. The village outside the gate seems to have flowed into the camp so our nextdoor neighbours were either staff or villagers which was quite nice and leads to there being a number of children around the place. The public areas were OK, on the edge of the river and with nice views but the staff were indifferent and hadn't learnt about customer focus at all. Watch out for your laundry as the system is that you take it to the bar and hand it over to someone who approaches you. One assumes that person is one of the staff as it's hard to tell who is and who isn't, as they sit at one of the tables chatting, and the management seem quite happy to let the villagers take laundry off site.One of our party had great trouble in tracking his down before we left. It's also very difficult to agree a price beforehand and we paid well over the odds.
There is a swimming pool at the camp but it's empty and there's a very dusty sign beside it saying that there is currently work being done. It doesn't look as if it's been in operation for some time and there was no sign of eager workmen trying to get it back into commission.
The room was dire and the floor in the bathroom was permanently flooded as there was no shower basin and the plughole wasn't at the lowest point of the floor. The curtains were virtually transparent making one's every move visible to passers by.
One of our party had his alarm clock and torch stolen from his room.
So all in all, I'd give this one a miss and, given the option, I'd sleep in the bush.

Tendaba camp serves a purpose: it is a great base for boat trips to the Bao Bolong wetlands and Kiang West National Park; it's certainly not luxury accommodation but it does the job!

We stayed in one of the riverside rooms, which were clean and basic. The shower didn't really work but that's fairly usual based on our experience of the Gambia. The riverside rooms are slightly more expensive than the standard rooms and when I booked I was advised that they are slightly cooler but I'd find it hard to believe this was truly the case.

The food was OK but certainly not the best we found in the Gambia. It is a great opportunity to try bushpig, which is somewhat of a speciality here though.

Both the trips (to Kiang and Bao Bolong) were well worth doing. Although I'm not a true bird-watcher, Bao Bolong is incredibly impressive and surpassed any other place we went in the Gambia for seeing birds. It's hard to express the number of birds we saw but if you appreciate king fishers and herons, you won't be disappointed.

I really enjoyed the trip to Kiang West National Park but it also left me with a feeling of what could be made of the park if it was properly invested in. We saw baboons, Red Colobus Monkeys and Warthog, which I think is fairly typical. There is apparently a large population of hyena in the park too and they had seen them the previous day to when we were there. We were tempted to visit the park independently but on this occasion it would have been a poor decision as the guide's knowledge of where to find animals was invaluable.

Both the trips mentioned above take half a day and they were running early in the morning and late in the afternoon when we were there.

I would recommend booking ahead - when we were there, it was almost full with a government-organised conference and this is apparently not unusual.

Overall I would recommend going to Tendaba but go for the minimum amount of time that allows you to do the activities you want to do there. It is a lot hotter at Tendaba than on the coast in the Gambia and the actual village around there is, to be frank, a bit of a dump.