Little Woods Inn — Hotel in Mbarara City

My wife and I, daughter and son-in-law, and very young grandson took two rooms at Little Woods Inn in late June 2018. We were taking a night stopover on the long drive from Bwindi to Entebbe. ||LWI is a mid-range motel with tidy rooms, hot water and modern, spacious bathrooms. Our room had a TV, a spacious closet, and a floor fan that probably comes in handy in the hotter, muggier months. The room came with small bottles of water, small soaps, and large towels. The queen four-poster bed had the standard netting, which was slightly too small. It left a small gap on one side of the bed. That was a little worrisome because LWI was ono of the very few places -- urban, rural, or forest--we encountered mosquitoes in our three Uganda weeks. ||The dinner menu was pretty standard, with many offerings, and the beer was cold. The box red wine was, however, warm and approaching the vinegar stage. My daughter, a veteran traveler and rain forest ecologist, drank it anyway. ||We ate dinner (and breakfast) on the patio, enjoying conversation with a French videographer. Guests arrived at all hours of the night. This is a popular stopover.||Rooms have main electric, and wifi is available in the dining area. Internet was slow, which is standard. ||During dinner, we noticed large bats performing the needed service of eating mosquitoes in the night air. A few mosquitoes lived enough to bother us a bit on the patio, but not enough to move us indoors. In the morning the trees next to the LWI were full of hanging, black-winged "flying foxes" as some Ugandans call them because of their fur color and head shape. Watching them fan themselves and crawl along the branches fascinated all of us and made for some good photos. ||The motel is away from town center enough to be quiet and elevated enough to be slightly cooler. Breakfasts are buffet with choice of eggs, pancakes, sausage, toast,...

Overall I had a decent stay here. The bed was comfortable and the bathroom facilities were good. The internet could have been faster but it was okay.||||The reason I give it 4 and not 5 was my experience at the restaurant: I asked the guy at the bar how much plain rice was. He said 2200 shillings. So I went ahead and ordered it. When I got the bill it was 5400 shillings. Not that it's a lot of money to me but I didn't appreciate being told one price and then being charged another. ||||The first two restaurant staff told me that I would just have to pay the higher price. I tried to explain how unfair this was: being given one price and then after consuming the food, being told it costs twice as much. They didn't seem to understand.||||Finally I spoke to the restaurant manager and explained my case a third time and she said "well - the guy who quoted you that price made a mistake.... I guess we'll have to take the money off his pay" - which didn't seem like a professional response; but I guess I got my point...

We spent 1 night at Little Woods Inn on our way to Queen Elizabeth. The grounds are beautiful, with Ibis in the trees, and I'm sure other birds we were too tired to watch. Our room was fine, bed comfortable with a good mosquito net - there were lots of mosquitos but not in our room. Bathroom was very nice, big shower, not slick, but water wouldn't mix. Stairs up to our room, but not bad. ||Dinner was not great - very hard to communicate and figure out just what we were ordering, and it was pretty expensive. Breakfast was good.||One thing we found irritating was that there were signs all over the front desk: Visa! MasterCard! Yay, let's use a card... oh sorry, credit card machine is broken. ...