6 Day Rwanda Gorillas And Chimpanzees Safari

Our driver guide collects you and we head south, because the long road to Nyungwe carries more than most transfer days do. First Nyanza, seat of the Rwandan monarchy, where the reconstructed royal residence stands in woven wood and thatch and the sacred long horned inyambo cattle are still kept and sung to by their herders, responding to the singing in a way you have to watch to believe. Then Huye and the Ethnographic Museum, given to Rwanda by Belgium in 1987 to mark twenty five years of independence and holding one of the better collections on the continent across seven galleries. Lunch here, then west into tea country, ridge after ridge of clipped green, until the forest wall rises ahead. The full drive covers roughly 225 kilometres over five to six hours with the stops. Nyungwe protects close to 1,000 square kilometres of montane rainforest and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2023, the first site in Rwanda to make that list. Check in near Gisakura, dinner, and a very early alarm.

Breakfast at four thirty, moving by five, because chimps are loudest in the hour after they leave their nests and the whole system runs on being in position before daylight. Most of our guests trek at Cyamudongo, a separated forest block of about 19 square kilometres holding a habituated community of roughly thirty chimpanzees, where the smaller search area gives better odds than the main forest. Groups are capped at eight trekkers. You hear them long before you see them, pant hoots carrying across the valleys, and the ground is steep and slick underfoot. When the community is found the clock starts and you get one hour, often spent craning upward at a fig tree rather than sitting on the ground, because chimps move and climb in a way gorillas do not. Lunch back at the lodge, then the afternoon belongs to the canopy walkway: a suspended bridge running about 160 metres between towers at some 60 metres above the forest floor, reached on the Igishigishigi trail past giant tree ferns. It moves underfoot, and the canopy runs unbroken to the horizon.

A short morning in the forest before we move on. Colobus tracking from the Gisakura centre is the most reliable primate sighting of the whole trip: Nyungwe holds the largest known troops of Rwenzori colobus anywhere, groups that can run to 300 or more animals moving together, and they often work the forest margin beside the tea, so the walking is easy. Several hundred black and white monkeys pouring through a stretch of canopy is the thing guests describe most vividly afterwards. Then a stop at the Gisakura tea estate, roughly 1,600 hectares acting as a buffer between forest and farmland, where pickers work the contour rows six days a week. From there we drive north up the Kivu Belt road, one of the better road days in East Africa, winding above the water with the Congo hills across the lake. Depending on your pace we stop at Karongi or continue to Rubavu. Lake Kivu covers about 2,700 square kilometres and is the sixth largest lake in Africa. Dinner by the water.

The rest day, and this trip needs one. Kivu is unusual among African lakes in holding no crocodiles, no hippos and no bilharzia, so swimming, kayaking and paddling are all straightforward. The morning is yours: swim, take a boat out among the islands, or paddle a section of shoreline with a guide. At Karongi the classic outing runs to Napoleon Island, properly Nyamunini, where a short steep climb passes beneath a roosting colony of thousands of fruit bats and finishes with a full circle view over the lake. In the afternoon we call at the Kinunu coffee washing station on the northern shore, where drying beds face out across the water and cherries from hundreds of smallholder farms are hand sorted, pulped, fermented overnight and dried, finishing with a tasting. Late afternoon we bring you into Rubavu, once a colonial beach resort and still lined with fading old mansions along the front. On a clear night the lava glow of Nyiragongo shows across the border in the Congo.

The shortest transfer of the trip, only about an hour from Rubavu up to Musanze through farmland and eucalyptus, so there is no rush this morning. Take breakfast slowly and swim again if you want to. We arrive near Kinigi around the middle of the day, which leaves the afternoon free, and there are three good ways to use it. The Twin Lakes at Burera and Ruhondo give an easy boat trip with the volcanoes standing behind the water. The Gorilla Guardians community village near Kinigi, founded by a former park warden to give paid work to people who had been poaching inside the park, covers Intore dance, traditional medicine, archery and banana beer, and more usefully the conversation about what changed and why. Or the Musanze caves, a lava tube system running a couple of kilometres beneath the town. Check in near the park headquarters, close enough that tomorrow does not start with an extra hour in the vehicle. Dinner early, boots by the door, bag packed tonight.

You leave in the dark and Kinigi is cold at six, dancers performing while everyone assembles and mist sitting on the peaks. Trackers went out at first light and are already with the families. The briefing runs at seven, groups are split to eight trekkers per gorilla family, and rangers cover the rules: seven metres back, no flash, mask on during the hour. Families are assigned that morning on fitness and overnight movement, so speak honestly about what you can walk. Then out through farmland to the boundary wall and into bamboo and nettles. Volcanoes National Park was gazetted in 1925 and is the oldest national park in Africa, protecting five of the eight Virunga volcanoes, and the massif holds more than half the world’s mountain gorillas. When you reach the family you get one hour. Hire a porter at the trailhead. Back to the lodge for lunch and a shower, then the drive south to Kigali, two to two and a half hours, arriving in the late afternoon for an evening flight or a final night in the city.