4 Days Drive Gorilla Safari – Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (Uganda – Rwanda)

Day 1: Arrival at Kigali International Airport to Flame Tree Village

Welcome to the Pearl of Africa! Arrive at Kigali International Airport, where you will be welcomed and transferred to your hotel. Overnight at Flame Tree Village. Flame Tree Village strategically located in the quiet suburb of Nyarutarama in Kigali. It boasts a total of 20 spacious villas that are not only comfortable but provide a tranquil, homely experience.

Day 2: Kigali to Bwindi Impenetrable National Park

In the morning after breakfast, transfer from Kigali to Bwindi National Park, Uganda; while driving through the verdant countryside, you will pass traditional homesteads and enjoy panoramic views. In the afternoon, arrival in Bwindi National Park, home of the endangered mountain gorillas. Dinner and overnight at Chameleon Hill Lodge.

Day 3: Gorilla tracking in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park

Following early morning breakfast, transfer to the national park offices, where you will be allocated a gorilla family in groups of 8, as well as a gorilla tracking guide. After a pre-tracking briefing by your guide touching on the gorillas generally, your assigned gorilla family, as well as appropriate safety precautions, you drive to the trailhead for the start of a thrilling adventure.

Expect to walk between 2 and 8 hours in steep and sometimes muddy conditions with rain overhead, which can be tricky and require a degree of (average) fitness. However, the thrill of coming face to face with a giant Mountain Gorilla silverback ultimately makes up for the effort!

Please remember to bring your passport for registration, appropriate, waterproof hiking boots and a light raincoat. To protect from stinging nettles, we recommend long pants and long-sleeved tops. A pair of old gardening gloves can help grab onto the vegetation, while most hotels/lodges provide a walking stick that comes in very handy, especially when hiking downhill.  A small waterproof backpack is an excellent idea to carry a light snack, bottled water as well as protection for your camera.

Upon sighting the gorillas, you spend the allowed one hour with them as they go about their daily lives; feeding, moving, playing, raising their young and sometimes wrestling by the juveniles is a unique and unforgettable experience! Dinner and overnight at Chameleon Hill Lodge.

Day 4: Kigali City Tour – Departure

After an early breakfast, transfer to Kigali. Visit the Genocide Memorial and Museum. Later you will proceed to Kigali airport for your evening departure flight.

Kigali Genocide Memorial in Kigali, Rwanda, commemorated the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The remains of over 250,000 people are interred there. There is a visitor centre for students and who wish to understand the events leading up to 1994. The Center is a permanent memorial to those who fell victim to the genocide and serves as a place in which the bereaved could bury their family and friends, and a clear reminder of the cost of ignorance.

History

In April 1994, reports of systematic mass murder within Rwanda began to filter out of Rwanda and circulate worldwide. Little, sadly, was done to halt the mass killing. To outsiders, the genocide was represented as tribal-based ethnic violence, with the Tutsis as the victims and the Hutu’s as the perpetrators. Precisely how many people were murdered may never be known; estimates vary between 500,000 and over a million. The number of people killed is widely accepted as being somewhere close to 800,000.