Lake Natron Maasai giraffe eco Lodge and camping

Very Casul Lodge with super friendly and helpful staff positioned well for Lake Batron.

Good stuff, good location with nice views. Clean, good food

We stayed two nights in a family bungalow. Apart from intermittent electricity, which must be expected given the remote location, we were very happy with our stay. Excellent food. Excellent service and attitude. As a budget option it is well placed. It's not easy to get to, so if you are adventurous enough to come then you don't mind the rough roads or limited WIFI, you appreciate the lunar landscape and sacred mountain that could blow at any time.... We liked it.

See above.

The area was beautiful and the garden was well-kept. Beds in the tent were comfortable and the shower had pressure (no hot water though). In the end they drove us to the bus stop free of charge!!! At this point, we found it unbelievable (read below)

1. Hidden fees. From previous reviews we saw that the staff didn't let guests know beforehand about all the extra fees for entering the area and hiking the volcano. It seemed like they had learned from that and messaged us everything (??) in detail before we arrived... However, an hour before we left to go up the volcano they told us we need to pay $100 for a car to take us to where the trail starts. They never told us about that even though we had already told them we wanted to go and were not coming by car. We bargained down to $70 which is still an extortionate amount for the 14km trip. 2. Restaurant. Food was quite decent but we only had breakfast included in our booking hoping to order things from the restaurant. There was no menu - if you want, you can pay 37500 TSH for an enormous 5-course meal (both for lunch and dinner). We couldn't just order a salad (which was part of the set meal). 3. We were planning on going to Lake Natron which was $20/person according to their initial message. However, this again didn't include transport but we could walk 90min there. The whole 'tour' does not include anything but a bit of walk around the lake. The logical question was why do we need a guide at all (the area is very flat so would be difficult to get lost) and the answer was he was experienced (in what?) and we would also be helping the community (common theme in their money shenanigans) 4. More hidden fees when you pay. Randomly at the end we were also presented with a service tax of $6 (cause why not) and some other calculation 'errors' for a dollar or two which, upon being pointed at, were explained as 'but for the community'. Not huge but just left a bitter aftertaste.