Rwanda 12-Day Luxury Private Tour

Welcome to Rwanda. Your driver meets you at Kigali International Airport and takes you to your hotel, a short drive through a city of green hills and tidy streets. The rest of the day is yours to settle in and rest after the flight. If you arrive in good time, a quiet dinner with a view over the city lights makes an easy first evening. Kigali sits at around 1,500 meters, so the evenings are pleasantly cool. Your local team is on hand for anything you need, from a SIM card to tomorrow’s plans. Tonight’s welcome dinner is included, timed around your arrival.

After breakfast, drive east through farmland and rolling hills to Akagera National Park, about two and a half hours away. Check in to your lodge and have lunch with a view. In the late afternoon, head out with your private safari guide for a first game drive, when the light softens and the animals start to move. Akagera is a fine story of recovery: lions and rhinos have been reintroduced, and the park now holds the Big Five. Dinner is at the lodge, and the evening sounds of the bush make a calm end to the day.

Set off early, when the air is cool and the wildlife is most active. Your guide follows the tracks north into the open savanna, looking for giraffes, zebras, elephants, buffalo and the park’s many antelope, with lions and rhinos a lucky bonus. Pause for a picnic or return to the lodge at midday for a swim and a quiet hour. In the afternoon, take the boat trip on Lake Ihema, included in your tour, where hippos, crocodiles and fish eagles gather along the shore. Sightings depend on nature, which is part of the pleasure. All meals today are at the lodge.

Enjoy a slow breakfast and, if you like, a short final game drive on the way out of the park. Your driver then takes you back to Kigali, about two and a half hours, in time for lunch. In the afternoon, if you wish, visit the Kigali Genocide Memorial with your guide, who gives you all the time and space you need, then see a little of the modern city, its craft shops and cafés. On the last Saturday of the month, the national community-work morning pauses traffic until about midday, and we plan around it. The evening is free.

After a relaxed breakfast, meet your driver and head northwest out of the city, about two and a half hours on a good road that climbs through terraced hills and small market towns. As you near Musanze, the Virunga volcanoes rise ahead. Arrive at your lodge in time for lunch, then take the afternoon to settle in, sit by the fire and enjoy the cool mountain air. Your guide goes through tomorrow’s trek with you and checks that boots, rain jacket and gloves are ready. Dinner is at the lodge, and an early night is a good idea.

After an early breakfast, drive to the park headquarters at Kinigi for the ranger briefing and your gorilla family assignment. The trek can take from one to several hours each way over steep, muddy ground, so a reasonable level of fitness helps, and a local porter is worth having. Once you find the family, you spend one quiet hour with them, as the park rules allow. Trackers locate the groups each morning and sightings are very likely, but never guaranteed. A packed lunch comes with you, and the afternoon is for rest at the lodge.

Today is deliberately unhurried after the trek. Sleep in, enjoy a long breakfast and let the experience sink in. If you would like more time in the forest, golden monkey tracking in the bamboo is a lovely, easier walk, or a second gorilla permit can be arranged; both are optional, need booking ahead and are quoted separately. Others prefer a short drive to the viewpoints over Lakes Burera and Ruhondo, the Twin Lakes, or a massage at the lodge. It is also a useful spare day if weather delays a trek. All meals are at the lodge.

After a slow breakfast, say goodbye to the mountains and drive southwest through the high farmland of the west, about three and a half hours with a coffee stop on the way. The road winds over ridges of tea and eucalyptus before dropping down to Lake Kivu at Karongi, once called Kibuye, a quiet town on a bay scattered with green islands. Check in to your lakeside hotel in time for a late lunch. The rest of the day is free for a swim, a walk along the shore or a drink as the sun sets over the water.

A day to slow right down. In the late morning, a private boat takes you out among the islands of the bay, a trip included in your tour, past fishermen’s canoes and small beaches, with time to stop on one of the islands if you wish. The rest of the day is yours: a long lunch on the terrace, a book in the shade or a massage. In the evening, watch the fishing boats head out with their lanterns, the crews singing as they row. It is a gentle pause between the forest and the volcanoes.

After breakfast, follow the lake road south, about three and a half hours past coffee farms, fishing villages and quiet bays, with stops along the water. Near the southern end of the lake the road turns inland and climbs through tea estates to the edge of Nyungwe National Park, one of the oldest rainforests in Africa. Check in to your lodge in time for lunch and spend the afternoon at rest, perhaps with a walk among the tea bushes. Your guide goes through tomorrow’s chimpanzee tracking with you over dinner. An early night is a good idea.

Today starts early, as the chimpanzees move off soon after dawn. With a ranger, walk into the forest to look for a habituated community; the trails can be steep and wet, and the chimpanzees here roam widely, so sightings are likely but less certain than with the gorillas. Once you find them, you stay for up to an hour. After a packed lunch, drive to Uwinka for the canopy walk, a suspension bridge high above the treetops with views across the valleys. Both the permit and the canopy walk are included; the minimum age for chimpanzee tracking on our tours is 18. The evening is quiet at the lodge.

Enjoy a last breakfast with the forest around you. Your driver then takes you down through the tea estates to Kamembe, about an hour and a half, for the domestic flight to Kigali, about forty minutes over the hills. Your driver meets you on arrival and looks after you until your international flight, with time for lunch in the city if your schedule allows. Evening flights fit this day best, and we plan the timing with you before you book. You leave with memories of savanna, lakes, volcanoes and forest. Safe travels, and we hope to welcome you back.