Easter at Lake Bunyoni
on Jason and Anna in Mbarara (Uganda), 13/Apr/2009 14:21, 34 days ago
We travelled to Lake Bunyoni on Friday for the Easter weekend, and we had an absolutely fantastic time.Bernadette, who is a VSO working in Kasese, came over to Mbarara on Thursday night. We had a bit of an adventure trying to meet each other in the bus park. I got lost on the way (!) and was late getting there, and then it turned out that Bernadette was in the taxi park and I was in the bus park, which are two separate places (luckily not too far from each other). We went out for the evening to a bar near our flat, called Peers Bar, and had some food. I'm a bit worried that we're going there slightly too often, as the waiter knew exactly what Jason was going to have - Pork Muchomo (which is roast or barbecued pork). There is not a great choice of veggie food at Peers, but they do make the most amazing chips - kind of English Chippie style - so I was happy.We got back to the flat and decided to open a bottle of wine, using the new corkscrew which I found in a local supermarket. Unfortunately, the quality of kitchen implements here is worse than useless, and the corkscrew snapped in half. Still, we were determined to get some wine, and decided to hammer a knife through the cork instead...this seemed to be working fairly well until the side of the wine bottle shattered!! Luckily we managed to salvage some of the wine, and drank it after we had passed it through a sieve to filter out any shards of glass!The following morning we set off on our journey to Lake Bunyoni, which involved two stages - getting a bus to a town called Kabale and then a taxi from there to the lodge we were staying at. Jason and I had not yet ventured onto Ugandan public transport, so it was a bit of an experience. We went to the bus park, thinking we would be able to get a coach to Kabale, but were instead directed to a little minibus - known as a Matatu. Public transport works very differently here compared to the UK - you get on a Matatu or a bus and have to wait until it completely fills up before the driver leaves - there are no timetables as such. So we sat in the Matatu for a hour, while it was steadily filling up with more people. The 'official' capacity is 14 passengers, but our driver managed to fit 20 people in.Once the Matatu had filled up to bursting point we started on our long journey along the extremely bumpy roads, and ended up in Kabale about 3 hours later. The journey was very uncomfortable, as we were packed in like sardines, so it was a real relief to get out of the Matatu in Kabale. Then we got a taxi (or 'special' as it's called here), and arrived at our lodge about half an hour later.We stayed at a place called Crater Bay Cottages, which was really beautiful.Jason and I had booked a little thatched cottage with an en-suite, while most of the other people we went with camped in the grounds. The lodge had it's own jetty, which we could swim from. The water was lovely, although a little bit cold, but it certainly refreshed us after the journey. We only stayed in Crater Bay for one night, as we had booked accommodation at Byoona Amagara for the other two nights, but I would really love to go back to Crater Bay sometime soon.Jason went across to the island by dug-out canoe, but it seemed a bit too much like hard work to me! I got a motor boat across the lake to Itambira Island, where the Byoona Amagara Island Retreat is. It is a very popular place, run as a not-for-profit organisation, and donates all its profits into the local community for schools etc. There is no electricity on the island, but there are a few solar panels dotted around the resort, and this generally provides enough electricity to keep the place going (depending on how much sun there is). Due to its popularity, we had only been able to book a room with a bunk-bed in it, but it was clean and comfortable (despite the fact that it looked like a shed from the outside!).We swam in the lake again on Saturday afternoon, and were hoping that Easter Sunday would be nice so we could get a canoe and paddle around. Unfortunately, it rained ALL DAY! It wasn't too much of a hardship though, as it was just lovely to stay on the island and relax reading a book (the resort has its own library) or playing cards.On Monday we had to leave Lake Bunyoni and make our way back to Mbarara. It seemed such a shame to go back home, as the sun had finally decided to come out and we would have liked to have spent the day swimming or canoeing. We will definitely be going back to Lake Bunyoni soon, it is such a perfect place to chill out and enjoy the beautiful scenery.