Rwanda

Rwanda is now firmly on the map for a stimulating adventure safari. Naturally its biggest drawcard are the gorilla trekking tours. And because Rwanda is small and compact, it’s easy to get around. Indeed, many places are within a three hour drive of Kigali, the capital.  So you can combine a gorilla safari in Rwanda with a Big Five safari in neighbouring Tanzania or Kenya. (There are direct flights from the Serengeti and Nairobi).

But it also makes for a great ‘stand-alone’ safari destination, especially to see Primates. And it's very scenic: good tar roads wind through fertile hillsides terraced with coffee-plantations. (Not for nothing is Rwanda called ‘The Land of a Thousand Hills’!)

Rwanda Gorilla Trekking

The rare promise of seeing some of the last wild population of mountain gorillas is the lure for most rwanda safari visitors. The charismatic Great Apes live in the high-altitude rainforest of the Volcanoes massif. This national park is home to over half of the estimated population of around 1000 mountain gorillas.  There are 12 habituated mountain gorilla groups in the Volcanoes National Park. So Rwanda is one of the best places in the world for a gorilla safari.

Unexpected treats on a Rwanda Safari Tour

One or two days of gorilla trekking is likely to be the highlight of your Rwanda safari. Other ‘must sees’ include the ancient high-altitude forest of Nyungwe National Park, home to chimpanzees and colobus monkeys and nearby scenic Lake Kivu. Whilst Akagera National Park has a wide variety of plains game, elephants and predators, mainly lions and leopard.

Vacations in Rwanda  - How to get there & get around

Rwanda is well-connected to the Serengeti and Kenya (Nairobi). But also to Cape Town, Johannesburg, Lusaka (Zambia) and Harare (Zimbabwe). So it is now very easy to combine a Rwanda safari tour to see the mountain gorillas, with either East or Southern Africa. Most people combine it with Kenya or Tanzania because of the shorter flight connections with direct flights from the Serengeti. But South Africa is also a possibility with connecting flights.