Day 93 – Mazike lodge
We woke up and had breakfast. S had cereal and J had watermelon. Weirdly, when they brought the milk for the cereal, it was hot. We learned that people in Uganda tend to have hot milk in the mornings and they don’t generally have cereal (this is a western thing that they do for the guests). After climbing down from the (tree)house, we headed to the next lodge, Mazike, which borders Queen Elizabeth national park, the oldest park in Uganda.
On the way, we learned a lot about Ugandan culture and history from Dona and he asked us lots of questions about English / US culture. At one point, Dona stopped at a roadside stall and took J to see all the fresh fruit that was laid out. J got to taste a fresh passionfruit. Aapparently you can open them without a knife by simply squeezing them. Dona explained this to J after she spent 5 minutes trying to pick open the fruit. Dona also picked up some massive avocadoes so J could eat them in a few days, once they are ripe.
Driving to the lodge, we occasionally saw animals, but saw our first antelope, a Ugandan kob. We arrived just after mid-day at Mazike. This lodge has fixed tents and is decorated with stone, natural wood and thatching. The view is over a massive valley and there are multiple seating areas in the common space. There is even a swimming pool. Like all the other lodges we’ve stayed at, it is quite lovely. Apparently the place was built and managed by a Spanish family that fled back to Spain soon after COVID started. We are the only guests here and it does not appear that there have been guests here for months, if not a year. There are also only three staff members (Edwin, Caleb and Florence), who are handling everything. There are normally around 20 staff here. Edwin, the chef, has now become the interim manager.
Lunch was delicious. We ordered a bottle of the house white, and they came out with a magnum bottle of ‘Four Cousins’ from South Africa. That is the smallest bottle they had. S had a vegetable soup and dessert. J had an avocado salad and watermelon. We passed our mains (buttered tilapia) on to Dona. Given that there are only three of us staying at the lodge, we have invited Dona to eat all meals with us. He previously explained to us that he could not eat with us without being invited. We told him we would have expected him to just pull up a chair, so we’ve now invited him. Confusingly, he also explained that if we invite him, he cannot say no. We hope that the good food is compensation for him having to eat every meal with us.
After lunch, we headed off to see a unique salt lake, which is used to produce natural salt for Uganda. Water from the salt lake is pumped into 10 metre squared, individually owned evaporation ponds. They go through three cycles of evaporation. Depending on when you take the salt out, it can be used for different purposes. The second and third cycles are used for animal and human consumption, respectively. Some of the salt comes out with a dirty black colour while other salt comes out a bit whiter. Our salt lake guide showed us what the salt for human consumption looks like and rattled off a bunch of health benefits. She said it was good for high blood pressure and diabetes. This is strange as in the US and the UK, you are told to limit your salt consumption if you have high blood pressure. She said that is because salt from ‘S’ country’ is processed and contains lots of harmful chemicals, whereas this salt is natural. Dona bought a big bag for his wife.
We then headed out. On the way, we saw a lake full of hundreds of flamingos. To get closer to the flamingos, we stopped by the side of the road and walked toward the water. We walked through a group of young boys (probably between the ages of 5 and 10) playing football, with goals that were only a metre wide. They asked us to play and we just laughed. Dona explained it’s been ages since these children will have seen a tourist / foreigner. When we got back into the car, we noticed that the air conditioner fan belt had burned out.
On the way back, we saw a herd of elephants and Dona said he spotted two female lions, but it was dusk, so neither of us could see them.
We got back to the lodge and headed straight to dinner. Dinner was a lovely black pepper steak for J and Dona, and a vegetable and rice stir fry for S. We took our magnum bottle of house wine and sat by the fireplace. We chatted with Dona for a bit and then went to bed.