RWANDA · EAST AFRICA
Gorillas, a thousand hills, and the Big Five.
Trek the mountain gorillas in the Virunga volcanoes, track the Big Five at Akagera, walk the Nyungwe canopy, and base it all out of a clean, easy capital. The tours worth booking, in one place.
Only in Rwanda
Three mornings you can’t have anywhere else.
Game drives and forest walks happen all over Africa. These three don’t. An hour with a gorilla family, the Big Five on a reborn savannah, and a bridge strung through the rainforest canopy. Build the rest of the trip around them.
In the volcanoes
Trek the Mountain Gorillas
Rwanda is one of only three countries on earth where wild mountain gorillas still live. The trek climbs through bamboo and stinging nettle in Volcanoes National Park until you reach a habituated family, and then the guides give you one hour, a few metres from a silverback. Nothing else on the trip comes close.
- 1 3 Day Gorilla Trek at Bwindi National Park via Kigali
- 2 1 Day Rwanda Gorilla Trekking Tour In The Volcanoes National Park
- 3 2 Day Gorilla Trekking Safari in Uganda via Kigali
On the savannah
The Big Five at Akagera
Akagera was almost lost, then brought back. Lions and rhinos returned to lake-dotted plains that had nearly emptied out, and today it is the only place in Rwanda for a Big Five game drive, and one of Africa's great conservation comebacks. All of it an hour and a half from the capital.
- 1 One-day Akagera National Park Game Drive with a Choice 4×4
- 2 Private 1 Day Akagera Big Five Safari with pick up and lunch.
- 3 From Kigali: 1-Day Akagera National Park Safari
In the rainforest
Walk the Nyungwe Canopy
Nyungwe is one of Africa's oldest mountain rainforests, and the only place on the continent with a suspended canopy walkway. You cross it fifty metres above the treetops, with chimpanzees and colobus monkeys somewhere in the green below. Cooler, wetter and older than anywhere else in the country.
- 1 1 Day Canopy Walk Adventure in Nyungwe Forest National Park
- 2 Kigali:1 Day Nyungwe Canopy Walk & Waterfall Tour adventure
- 3 1 Day Canopy walk way in Nyungwe Natioinal park
The thousand hills
There’s a hill behind every hill.
Rwanda folds and folds again: tea terraces, banana groves, eucalyptus ridgelines, and a lake at the bottom of every valley. The roads climb and wind, the air stays cool and clean, and the green never quite stops. This is the country the gorillas and the Big Five live in.
The hikes and the hill country →Start in Kigali
Begin where every trip begins.
Almost everyone lands in Kigali before the parks, so give it a day. The capital is clean, calm and walkable, and the single most-booked tour in the country starts right here.
The most booked
Rwanda's Most Popular Tours
Gorilla treks, Akagera game drives, Kigali days out and the long road to the lake. The experiences travellers come to Rwanda for.
By region
Six corners of one small country.
Rwanda is tiny and packs a lot in. Volcanoes National Park for the gorillas. Akagera for the Big Five. Nyungwe for the rainforest. Lake Kivu for the water. Kigali for the start. And a thousand green hills in between.
By experience
Or pick what you came to do.
Gorillas if it's the once-in-a-lifetime trek. Akagera if it's lions and rhinos. Coffee mornings, canopy walks, lakeside afternoons, Kigali on foot, and everything in between.
Three parks
Which park first?
Rwanda's three big parks are three completely different days out, and three different drives from Kigali. Where you start usually comes down to one thing: the gorilla permit you booked months ahead.
Kigali
The calmest capital in Africa.
Travellers expect Kigali to be a place they pass through. Most end up wishing they had stayed longer. Hillside markets, the moving Genocide Memorial, some of the best coffee on the continent, and moto-taxis humming up and down the hills, all of it spotlessly clean and genuinely easy to walk.
- 1 Kigali: Traditional Coffee Experience ( Bean to Brew)
- 2 Kigali City Tour with a Local Guide and Driver
- 3 Kigali E-Bike City Tour with Breakfast
Bean to cup
Rwanda runs on coffee.
Some of the world's best washed arabica grows on these hills, and you can follow it from cherry to cup, picking, pulping, roasting, tasting. Three coffee mornings worth building into a city day.
Out west
The afternoon by the lake.
Lake Kivu runs along the Congo border, a string of easy-going towns where the pace finally drops: Rubavu, Karongi, Kibuye. Boats out to the islands, swims with no current, and long sunsets over the water. Three ways onto the lake.
The cultural day
The Rwanda between the parks.
Intore dancers and drummers, basket-weavers and banana-beer brewers, cooking classes and the stories behind the country's recent history. The half-days that turn a wildlife trip into a sense of the place.
Plan it
Three perfect days in Rwanda.
First time here, and short on days? A route that fits the gorillas, the savannah and the lake without a wasted morning.
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