Before I set foot at the spot a week ago, I had known about ‘the other Serena’ located some where in Kigo on the shores of Lake Victoria, a few kilometers off the highway to Entebbe International Airport from the township of Lweza. However I hadn’t heard a syllable about the fact that the resort offers some amazing wonder which is exclusive only to it in the whole country.
I only saw that interesting splendor when I spent a weekend at the resort a month ago, and management informed the reason the magnificence hasn’t been known to many yet is because the resort is still a work in progress. Whereat some of the novel highlights are yet to be completely finish and such that they would not like to expose them before their complete construction.
Management, however, informed me that all the bits still under construction should be complete before the end of this year. They also informed me that the entire place is being designed to replicate the wonder of a classic, rustic resort. Nationally, my journalist soul could only think of writing home about the special highlights I had seen.
A Venetian Marina
For the uninitiated, a marina is a uniquely designed harbor with moorings for pleasure craft and small boats, where the shores of natural soil or sand are redesigned with concrete and cement. This is the kind of thing that has been created at the resort, where at the lake’s shoreline has been reconstructed with concrete to make a river like arm stretching out to the lake.
The magnificence that has been hence evoked is quite hard to describe. Allen Ampaire, the head of Sales at Serena Hotels, explains that they chose to build a marina rather than a usual beach because “there are already many hotels on sandy beaches in Uganda yet we needed to offer something charmingly different from what is already in place in Uganda.”
On its lakeward roll, the marina at Lake Victoria resort begins at the entrance of an expansive a clubhouse designed to hold a restaurant and a bar and a meeting room, and Ampaire says this is intended to have people who might not be going boating unwinding in the pleasant setting besides the marina.
A colosseum wedding venue
You knew that old coliseum where Roman citizens gathered to watch fighting matches that were between men as well as between men and beasts. It’s a smallish but also modern replica of that same arena which sits beyond the residential villas and next to the golf course at Serena Lake Victoria Resort.
Just the colosseum wasn’t constructed to host Moses Golola in his endeavors to fight some white man and make his skin dark, rather as a venue for promising events, particularly weddings. With gardens that can sit over 1,500 people, the colosseum has a provision for setting up an altar for those who want to have their congregation at the colosseum, a provision for setting up tents, among others.
Golf Course Rising
This will be another rich expansion to the resort when it opens later this year. Sitting between the marina, the colosseum and the residential villa, its wonder will mainly come from the fact that it will make for a beautiful playing field right on the shores. However only nine of the 18 holes will be available for use this year, as reclaiming the lake shores has proved a tough challenge.
