Lake Bunyonyi

Back from Murchison Falls NP we picked out a new hotel in Kampala, same price as our previous one but with a slightly less hectic location. At least, we thought it would be the same price – the only double they had available was the “ultra luxe” suite. It was still just $35 for the room, so we said what the heck. The “luxe” touches comprised of thick tasselly curtains, three free bottles of water, a single terrycloth bathrobe, and a shiny bedspread. There was a small TV hung from the ceiling but it didn't work. Not exactly presidential caliber, but I did feel a bit out of place scrubbing my undies in the sink.

Kampala Balla

We left Kampala a second time for Kabale, way down south near the Rwanda border, our final destination being the nearby Lake Bunyonyi. Our method of travel was the Post Bus, a daily transit service offered by the Uganda postal system. It was an eight-hour trip, and we stopped at every single post office along the way as well for any roadside Jack who stuck his arm out, but as far as bus rides go it was not so bad. After a night in Kabale we caught a cab to the lake ten kilometers out of town. The road passed alongside several small rock quarries where groups of men and young boys were literally making gravel by hand – manually rolling boulders down from an exposed cliff face and chipping them into golf-ball-sized pieces with a hammer and chisel, some perched on piles as tall as themselves. They didn't look like they were working that hard.


Lake Bunyonyi is a low-key spot with a good reputation among people who like to do quiet things. Our accommodation of choice was Byoona Amagara, a backpacker-targeted community-centric lodge set on a small island. The resort offers a free shuttle to the island in the form of a dugout canoe – at a dock on the mainland we were met by a young man named Justice who lugged our bags into a heavy-looking hollowed-out section of eucalyptus, steadied the thing as we got in, and handed us each a paddle. The ride took just shy of an hour, and as we chatted (World Cup, Canadian weather, et cetera) I envisioned waking the following morning unable to lift my arms.

Do the P.A.D.D.L.E.

While it's nobody's first vision of Africa, Lake Bunyonyi is a truly beautiful place, set among steep hills cultivated in dense terraces right down to its squiggly shore, quaint and endlessly green. Byoona Amagara is located on tiny Itambira Island, one of many in the lake, which it shares with a small village and about a billion birds. We slept in a 'bio-dome', a geometric thatched structure open on one side to a private deck and a more-than-adequate view the lake beyond. The place is apparently owned by a guy in New York who donates all profits to the local community. Everything runs off solar panels, and they somehow have enough juice to screen nightly movies, at a dollar a head, from an impressive catalogue. We watched The Aviator and The Constant Gardener. Not exactly feel-good movies but there wasn't much of a need, now was there?


The first two days on the island were a bit dreary, which meant warm beer (no sun ergo no fridge) and lots of cribbage. But when it brightened up we rented one of the dugouts to explore the nearby islands. I am no stranger to a canoe, and with Alanna's credentials we were fairly positive of our ability to manoeuver. But it was not until we'd drifted into the lake just far enough to come within view of the Byoona Amagara dining terrace that Alanna in the rear discovered that the physics of a dugout are completely backwards from its fiberglass equivalent and we could do nothing but spin in circles like city-slicking novices. We (royal 'we') eventually got it figured out, though not without some concentration. Watching twelve-year-olds float by straight as an arrow while barely touching their paddle to the water was a bit hard to take.



We ventured ashore on Bwama Island, Itambira's neighbour and a former mission and leper colony. The small island is dotted with blue-roofed brick buildings reminiscent of those of Livingstonia in Malawi. The island is home to both the primary and secondary schools for the area, and arriving on shore we came across what is labeled in blue paint as the 'Bwama School Bus':

"the keel on the bus goes..."

Our guidebook mentioned Bwama as worthy of exploration, but we felt half as though we were wandering through someone's backyard. Any surface of the island not covered in pathways or buildings was almost entirely surrendered to crops of potato, maize and banana, save for an undulating soccer pitch beside the primary school. We visited during a spring break of sorts, and without kids running around it was very difficult to tell whether the school buildings were abandoned or not. Windows were boarded up, there was childish graffiti scrawled over the walls and a sombre lack of furniture. The primary school's exterior was decorated with various decisive slogans in bold black paint: AIDS KILL, ABSTAIN FROM SEX, VIRGINITY IS HEALTH, STAY AWAY FROM BAD GROUPS and DO NOT ACCEPT GIFTS, which confused us, but probably means something along the lines of don't take candy from strangers, which is no doubt more of a problem here, seeing as kids have a habit of demanding that very thing from every white person they see.



The secondary school operates in the buildings of the former lepers' hospital, equal parts historic-charming and plain old run-down. Again, the place had an aura of having been empty for decades rather than weeks, but our paddler Justice later confirmed than students were to be returning in only a few days' time.



But other than the one fitness activity to remind us how out-of-shape we were (isn't backpacking around Africa supposed to be a workout?) we easily passed the days reading our books, throwing ourselves off the beautiful dock and eating Byoona Amagara's (mostly) delicious foods. And while Alanna and I are both very bored by the majority of birds (I say if it's not bigger or brighter than a fire hydrant, it ain't worth identifying) but the little Bunyonyi birds were actually pretty cool, some with long ribbon-tails up to a foot in length and often six or seven species occupying the same bush. Still doesn't mean I needed to know their names.

Fresh crayfish from the lake figures prominently on the Byoona menu.

On the fifth day Justice paddled us back to the mainland and we were very sad. After another night in Kabale we discovered that the only bus that would take us to our next destination left at two thirty in the morning and we were even sadder. But Bunyonyi was the solitude we'd been waiting for, hard to beat on all counts, and worth an insufferable bus trip to the moon and back.