Heritage Safari Lodge — Hotel in Nwoya

Visited this lodge for one night in October.|The Heritage Safari Lodge is near a park entrance, which makes it a good base for your game drive. Unfortunately we had heavy rain two days prior and the night, so the gate entrance near the lodge was flooded and we had to drive an hour to enter the park.||The lodges property is directly next to the Nile and they offer a boat tour ($30 pp) which we took in the evening. The tour is very nice, you will see hippo’s from up close, elephants and other land animals from some distance. Hippos maybe even more close than you would like, but just tell the captain if that’s the case. ||The rooms are very simple. Mine contained 2 beds, not large enough for 2, but very spacious for one. There is concrete flooring and behind a wall there is a sink, toilet and shower. The lighting is poor, but hey, your on safari so let’s skip the make up ;) |There are screens in stead of windows and no air conditioning. |You can lock your room from the outside with a padlock, from the inside with a slide lock. ||The mosquito nets had lots off hols in them, so they were of no use.|They also had some feces on them of a friendly Gecko. The droppings were present in the entire room. That could explain the smell in the room. |The bedding was moist and smelled, so I used a worn t-shirt to cover the pillow and slept like a baby. The next morning I checked with my travel mates if they also had a smelly room and bedding, and luckily I was the only one. I’m sure that the staff would have changed it if I’d asked, they were more than friendly during our stay.||The food is ok, the staff very friendly. Please note that you are in the middle of nowhere and that the menu is limited and also the resources at the lodge. There is power from a generator until some time at night, then it’s switched off until morning. So make sure you’re battery’s are full or you have other ways of loading like a power bank. Your cellphone may or may not have network and you don’t have WiFi available. ||I rated 3/5 because the price was out of range with what you get. If the mosquito nets were in order and the bedding and room crisp and fresh, I would have...

Mid ranged priced bandas located right opposite Murchison falls national park and only 2.5km from the park gate(Tangi) in de-gazetted area, right in the middle of the great north elephant corridor(Bar Lyec), along the banks of the majestic and mighty Albert Nile.

The entire lodge is constructed according to traditional Luo architecture of (27)round grass thatched bandas(huts) with all bandas having modern facilities filling up the inside and 270° degree panoramic view of the river, which also allows for great air circulation especially during the brutally hot rift valley dry seasons. Being a family run business, the hospitality is second to one in the area with owner and director(William Olwoch-Lalobo) along with his son(George Lalobo) and wife (Christine) are always on hand to ensure every guest is well tended. The vast lodge extends all the way down to the river(bikes available for hire to tour the lodge) where a boat marina sits with a eight seated boat parked, this provides the guests with an extra experience of being able to enjoy Albert Nile cruises( sunrise breakfast game cruise, river birding Safari, evening game cruise and the sundowner drifter). In terms of chaw the lodge offers a carte` d' jour menu offering and the service staff are always on hand to promptly pick orders well in time with dinner served between 6pm - 9:30pm The evening camp fire (Wang OO) is usually very informative from which in the spirit of culture and keeping with the lodge theme of cultural Heritage, guests learn why things are as they are at the lodge from the construction, to the warm homey feel to the place is all a direct reflection of the culture of the Luo specifically the Acoli. As for park activities, Mr. William or general manager George Lalobo are always on hand to advise guests on itineraries that will give you the best of the park. On top of advice the lodge has 5 land cruisers which are available for hire to tour the park and do game drives( Heritage boasts 1 of 2 open body game cars the other owned by the park...

Awful place. Very unprofessional staff. |WiFi never connected to internet. When we asked the staff to fix it, they came up with excuses like "it was working just a minutes ago" and "sometimes it goes offline for 1 or 2 hours and comes back"|It was a 3G wireless router, so when we connected I found that the administrator page was unprotected. Entering there it showed that they never charged money to the simcard (to access internet) sine January (this was end of April). So everything else was a lie. Maybe in low season you never have internet, but this is not what they advertised.|The mosquito net on the bed was somehow broken, since I had a lot of mosquitos inside (not the first time using one of these, so I know how to get in and out without allowing mosquitos inside). |They cut the power at 22, and restore it at 5 am.|Since it was a saturday night, all the night until 4 am we could hear a very loud nearby night club, with music and people screaming (inside a national park. Great for the animals too, right?).||Food was below average, with few options and low quality.|The room is kinda OK, but with so many noises and mosquitos is very difficult to sleep well.||When the staff greeted us they warned that sometimes elephants enter the land of the hotel, and they need to fire a gun into the air, so we shouldn't be afraid if we heard gunfire during the night. Luckily we didn't heard none (or the night club was actually too loud), but be careful with this. ||I get this is a budget option, but they should provide what they advertise. |And silence during the night is something you hope to find in the middle of the African Savanna (or just animal noises, not...