10-Day Rwanda Safari Tour For Mid-Range Travelers

Arrival in Kigali

Your 10-day Rwanda safari begins when you land at Kigali International Airport. Our driver will meet you outside the arrivals hall, help with your bags and take you to your hotel — about twenty minutes to the city centre. Kigali is a very clean and safe city, with green hills and paved roads along the way. You can spend the rest of the day resting, walking around local markets, or visiting local coffee shops to taste Rwandan coffee. In the evening, you will eat dinner at your hotel and rest well for the busy days ahead.

Accommodation: Luxury: Kigali Serena Hotel · Mid-range: Heaven Boutique Hotel · Budget: Yambi Guesthouse

Kigali City Tour and Akagera Transfer

After breakfast, your driver will take you to the Kigali Genocide Memorial, a sad but important place to learn the history of Rwanda — you will spend about two hours there. After lunch at a local restaurant, you leave Kigali and drive to Akagera National Park, about 110 kilometres and roughly two and a half hours on a smooth road passing small villages and farms. You will reach the park gate in the late afternoon, check in and rest before dinner.

Accommodation: Luxury: Magashi Camp · Mid-range: Mantis Akagera Game Lodge · Budget: Akagera Rhino Lodge

Morning Game Drive and Boat Trip in Akagera

After a very early breakfast, you enter the park for a morning game drive. Akagera has lions, elephants, giraffes and zebras, and morning is the best time to see predators hunting — you will spend about four hours driving through the open savannah. Around midday, return to your lodge for lunch. In the afternoon, take a two-hour boat cruise on Lake Ihema, seeing hippos, sunning crocodiles and many birds, including the African fish eagle catching fish. Drive back to your lodge for dinner and sleep.

Drive to Nyungwe National Park

Today involves a long drive — leaving Akagera after breakfast and heading south to Nyungwe National Park, about seven to eight hours covering more than 200 kilometres, with stops to stretch your legs. You stop in Huye for lunch and visit the Ethnographic Museum, which shows how the old kings of Rwanda lived, with traditional grass-and-wood houses, old farming tools and clothes. The road becomes winding as you enter the forest, and you arrive at your hotel in the evening for dinner and an early night.

Accommodation: Luxury: One&Only Nyungwe House · Mid-range: Nyungwe Top View Hill Hotel · Budget: Gisakura Guesthouse

Chimpanzee Tracking and Canopy Walk

You wake at four in the morning to be at the park office early for chimpanzee trekking. Local trackers brief you on the rules before you walk into the forest — finding the chimpanzees can take between two and four hours over steep, muddy paths. Once found, you spend one hour watching them play and eat, swinging through the trees with loud calls.

After tracking, return to your hotel for lunch. In the afternoon, head back to the forest for the canopy walk — a bridge 70 metres above the ground and 160 metres long, with views of monkeys and birds from above the canopy. The bridge is very strong and safe, even if the height feels intimidating. Afterwards, return to your hotel.

Transfer to Lake Kivu

Sleep in a little later today. After breakfast, leave Nyungwe and drive to Lake Kivu, staying in the town of Karongi — about three hours on a road that goes up and down many green hills, with beautiful water views and bicycles loaded with bananas along the way. Lake Kivu is one of the largest lakes in Africa, and it has no crocodiles or hippos, so the water is safe for swimming.

Spend the afternoon swimming, reading by the water, or taking a small boat to visit nearby islands and watch local fishermen preparing their nets. In the evening, eat fresh fish and watch the sunset over the lake.

Accommodation: Luxury: Cleo Lake Kivu Hotel · Mid-range: Moriah Hill Resort · Budget: Home Saint Jean

Drive to Volcanoes National Park

Eat breakfast looking at the calm lake, then start the drive north to Volcanoes National Park — about four hours on a winding road with many sharp turns (take motion sickness medicine if needed), passing tea farms and small towns. You reach Musanze, the town next to the park, in time for lunch — it's cooler here at altitude. In the afternoon, visit the Gorilla Guardians Village to learn about traditional Rwandan life, including bow-and-arrow demonstrations and traditional dances. Head to your lodge in the evening to rest for the big day ahead.

Accommodation: Luxury: Sabyinyo Silverback Lodge · Mid-range: Five Volcanoes Boutique Hotel · Budget: Kinigi Guesthouse

Mountain Gorilla Tracking

Today is the most important day of your 10-day Rwanda safari. After an early, good breakfast, you drive to the park office in Kinigi, where park staff check your permits — the Rwanda Development Board manages all tourism activities and issues these permits, and a gorilla permit costs $1,500 per person. It is very important to book this permit six months early.

A head tracker puts you in a group of eight people, and you walk into the forest to find the gorillas — the walk can take one to four hours over often wet, slippery ground. When you find the gorilla family, you spend exactly one hour with them, staying seven metres away, taking photos and watching them eat leaves while the silverback protects his family. After the hour is over, you walk back down the mountain.

Golden Monkey Tracking

Return to the park office early in the morning to track golden monkeys, which live in the bamboo forests near the bottom of the volcanoes. The walk to find them is usually much easier than the gorilla trek, mostly on flat ground, taking about one hour each way. When you find the monkeys, you'll notice they move very fast — jumping from tree to tree and eating bamboo leaves, with bright orange fur on their backs. You spend one hour watching them play. After tracking, return to your hotel for lunch, then rest or walk around Musanze town, where you can buy souvenirs at the local markets.

Return to Kigali and Departure

On the last day of your safari, eat breakfast and pack your bags. Your driver takes you back to Kigali — about two and a half hours on a smooth road, mostly downhill, with beautiful rolling hills one last time. If you have time before your flight, do some last-minute shopping at local art centres for paintings or woven baskets. Your driver drops you off at Kigali International Airport for your flight home, with many good memories of the animals and people of Rwanda.