4 Day Rwanda Gorillas And Lake Kivu Safari

Our driver guide meets your flight at Kigali International Airport and we head north the same day. If you land early enough we take in the Kigali Genocide Memorial at Gisozi first, resting place of more than 250,000 victims of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, which gives you the context for the rest of the country. Then the road climbs out of the capital through hills terraced to the ridgeline with beans, potatoes and pyrethrum, past roadside markets and bicycle taxis stacked with bananas. After two to two and a half hours the Virunga chain appears ahead, five volcanoes running along the border with cloud usually sitting on the shoulders of Sabyinyo and Muhabura. We check you into your lodge near Kinigi, close enough to park headquarters that tomorrow’s start does not begin with an hour in the vehicle. If there is light left, a walk through the potato fields around the lodge is worth taking, with the volcanoes going pink behind you. Dinner, boots by the door, and a bag packed before you sleep.

You leave in the dark. Kinigi park headquarters is cold at six in the morning, dancers performing while everyone assembles, coffee going round and mist on the peaks behind the buildings. Trackers went out at first light and are already sitting with the families, radioing positions back, which is why treks now take a fraction of the time they once did. The briefing runs at seven. Rangers split everyone into groups of eight trekkers per gorilla family and read through the rules: seven metres back, no flash, mask on during the hour. Families are assigned that morning on fitness and where each group has moved overnight, so speak up honestly about what you can walk. Then out through farmland to the stone boundary wall and into bamboo and nettles on wet volcanic soil. Volcanoes National Park was gazetted in 1925, the oldest national park in Africa, and the Virunga massif holds more than half the world’s mountain gorillas. When you reach the family you get one hour, and it goes faster than anyone is ready for. Hire a porter at the trailhead. Afternoon at the lodge, feet up.

A relaxed breakfast, then west down to the lake, a drive of only about an hour through farmland and eucalyptus. Lake Kivu covers roughly 2,700 square kilometres and is the sixth largest lake in Africa, shared with the Democratic Republic of Congo and sitting at around 1,460 metres, which keeps it pleasant rather than hot. On the way in we call at the Kinunu coffee washing station, about twenty kilometres south of Rubavu, where drying beds face out across the water. Kinunu buys cherries from hundreds of smallholders farming plots often smaller than a quarter of a hectare, and the tour walks you through hand sorting, pulping, overnight fermentation and drying, finishing with a tasting of beans processed on the spot. Afterwards we take you into Rubavu, once a colonial beach resort and still lined with fading old mansions along the front. The afternoon is yours: swim, walk the shore, or sit with a drink and watch the fishermen paddle out. On a clear night the lava glow of Nyiragongo shows across the border in the Congo.

No alarm. Kivu is unusual among African lakes in holding no crocodiles, no hippos and no bilharzia, so the morning is genuinely yours to swim in, and the water off the Rubavu beaches is the best on the Rwandan side. If you would rather be moving, we can arrange a guided kayak along the shoreline, a boat trip out among the islands, or a short cycle on the first section of the 227 kilometre Congo Nile Trail, which starts here and runs the length of the lake down to Rusizi. The Nyamyumba hot springs a little way along the shore are worth an hour, a set of pools where locals soak feet and legs in water hot enough to need care getting into. Late morning we start the drive back to Kigali, roughly three hours on good tarmac through the western hills, arriving in the afternoon for your onward flight or a final night in the city. If you have hours to spare we will stop at Kimironko market or Caplaki Craft Village on the way in.