Travel reviews by Mr & Mrs D from Willingham

"bear in mind there for only one night, arriving late at night."

"We did however have major problem/disappointment with Nyungye Top View Hotel
1. The hotel was truly awful. We arrived on Saturday and during the night the power went off at first intermittently and then for good so we were without power (and therefore water which needed to be pumped) for 36 hours. (Restored on Monday afternoon) . The mains had failed and so did their generator. There were no torches or kerosene lamps in the whole place as far as we could tell. When the (kind) staff tried to serve us dinner by the weak light of their mobile phones, we insisted on lending them our head torch. After no electricity (and no fridge) they were still offering us meat or fish to eat although on my enquiry, they agreed it was not a good idea as they had no way to keep it cool during the outage.(We became vegetarian) The manager was nowhere to be found ; the staff tried very hard to be helpful and eg arrived with a jerry can of cold water on Monday morning so we could wash.
We understand that power can be a problem in Africa but to be so totally unprepared was astounding.

Beyond the water/ power problem, the hotel was unfinished; and totally lacking in aesthetic appeal. Eg large pieces of furniture were placed in the bedrooms to block out the natural light and views from the potentially nice bedrooms_ (although there were beautiful objects on the shelves of the sitting room). Altogether there was no sign of real management or care in the delivery of the service ; the staff wanted to help but were powerless to do anything except apologise.

2. We spent each day's 'chimp' experience in the chimp sanctuary ( the Cyamudongo Forest) which is just 4 sq kms and not part of the Nyungye National Park. This was fine for one day but we would have loved to walk in the Nyungye National park and have the opportunity of looking for/at birds. Apart from our initial drive through the park we never saw it or experienced it at all. This was not what your itinerary lead us to expect."

"Volcanoes N P was very good;the gorillas were extraordinary.

One last point which was a disappointment in Volcanoes as in Nyungye was that in the afternoons we were expecting to be able to go for local expeditions to look for birds/ appreciate the environment. Because of the attention attracted by visitors from children/ others asking for money etc one really needs a local guide/ companion but when we asked in the hotel or our driver if we could go out for a walk we were simply advised against it. We tried on a couple of occasions to go out by ourselves but the level of hassle was uncomfortable and so self defeating of a relaxed appreciation of the environment. A local guide would have solved that.

We did insist on our driver taking us one afternoon to the twin lakes in volcanoes but this was not readily offered, although it was on our itinerary."