rwanda: luxury primate & rhino safari

More likely than a few years ago, and the answer depends on which rhino.

Eastern black rhino came back in 2017 and 2019, but they keep largely to the thickets in the park's southern half, and we rate them as rare.

White rhino are the realistic hope. Thirty arrived from South Africa in 2021 and a further 70 in June 2025, and they graze open plains in both the south and the north, which is the half of the park where Magashi stands.

We rate white rhino as occasional, so count one as a good day's reward and not a given, and let three nights work in your favour.

What Akagera delivers day after day is buffalo, zebra, topi, giraffe, hippo and crocodile, with lion on the northern plains an occasional bonus.

We put success at better than 95 per cent, though no official figure exists and no one can promise a wild animal.

The odds are that good because trackers leave in the dark to pick up each of the twelve habituated families from the place it bedded down, so by the end of your 7am briefing the rangers generally know which way to walk.

The route is written around one gorilla trek, with golden monkeys suggested for the second day, and in our experience that one hour is enough for most people, though it passes quickly, and whether your family sits in the open or deep in wet undergrowth is down to luck.

Three nights at the lodge leave two clear mornings, so a second trek fits. It needs a dated permit of its own, and with eight places per family per day those cannot be conjured up at the lodge, so tell us as you book.

We think so, because it is so unlike the gorilla hour.

The golden monkey is one of Africa's most localised primates, its range centred on the bamboo of the Virunga volcanoes, and the larger of the troops visited in Volcanoes National Park numbers 80 to 100 animals.

We call it the easiest place to be confident of finding them, and the troops are untroubled by people and simple to photograph; at times they even leave the forest to raid the potato fields along its edge.

It is a gentler walk than the gorilla trek, which suits legs that climbed the day before, and the mood is lighter: a big, busy troop feeding in the bamboo where the gorilla hour is still and close.

The route is planned as a mix of road and air, and we settle which legs fly as we tailor it to you.

No scheduled flights serve the volcanoes, so an air transfer there means a chartered helicopter, typically an Agusta carrying five or six passengers; the flight from Kigali takes about 30 minutes, against a road transfer of two and a half to four hours.

The two legs that most repay flying are the long crossing from Akagera, on the eastern border, to the volcanoes in the north-west, and the journey home.

The trip ends at Nyungwe, five to six hours by road from Kigali. The quicker ways out are a helicopter, around half an hour, or the scheduled airline service from Kamembe airport, which is an hour or so from Nyungwe House by road.

Kigali to Akagera's entrance is two to three hours by road.

Yes: the long dry stretch.

June, July and August carry our recommended rating for every park on this route. In Akagera the bush thins and animals gather at the lakes, which is the easiest time to follow lion and rhino, and the trails on the volcanoes and in Nyungwe are at their firmest.

September holds up well in Akagera and on the volcanoes. The shorter dry spell of January and February is the fallback, rated well for Akagera and the gorillas, with February the better of the two in Nyungwe.

Gorilla tracking never stops for the weather, so what a wetter month costs you is comfort on the slope far more than your chances.

May, October and December sit in between: showers, softer trails, greener country, fine birding in Akagera, and gorilla permits that are easier to secure.

April and November we rate lowest across the route, and March is a hard month on the volcanoes.

Less dependable than the gorillas, and as Nyungwe closes this route it is worth arriving with the right expectations.

Nobody publishes a success rate for it. Semi-habituated is the term for the communities the park tracks, and we judge the tracking here in Rwanda more difficult than in Uganda or Tanzania.

It is also the most physical morning of the trip: the tracking is difficult, the start is at about 5.30am, and the forest is steep. Groups are capped at eight, and the hour you are allowed with the chimpanzees begins when you reach them.

Our advice is to track on your first morning at Nyungwe House. With three nights there, that leaves a spare morning to go again if the forest does not cooperate, and if it does, the second day is free for the canopy walkway or a waterfall trail.