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Off: US Holidays
Our Rwanda safari packages are private trips built around your dates and your pace — never a fixed departure shared with strangers. Rwanda is small, well-organized and easy to move around, which makes it the most efficient gorilla trip in Africa. You can land in Kigali in the evening and be looking at a mountain gorilla the next morning. You book and pay a US company in Utah; a licensed regional operator running since 2017 handles the ground.
The reason most people come. Volcanoes National Park sits in the Rwandan Virungas, about two to two and a half hours from Kigali on genuinely good tarmac, and holds twelve to fourteen habituated mountain gorilla families open to visitors.
This is also where Dian Fossey worked. The hike to her grave and the old Karisoke research site is a separate half-day and a good second activity if you have the legs for it.
Golden monkey tracking runs from the same park headquarters — shorter, cheaper and considerably more chaotic than the gorillas.
One of the oldest rainforests in Africa, in the southwest. Nyungwe has thirteen primate species including chimpanzees and large habituated troops of Angolan colobus, which move through the canopy in groups of hundreds.
The canopy walkway is the signature. It is a suspended bridge roughly 200 feet above the forest floor, and it is either the highlight of your trip or the part you walk quickly. There is no middle ground.
Rwanda’s savanna park, on the Tanzanian border in the east, and a genuine conservation success story. Lions were reintroduced in 2015 and black rhino in 2017, which made Akagera a Big Five park again after decades without.
It is a completely different landscape from the rest of the country — lakes, papyrus swamp and open plains rather than mountains. Two nights here turns a gorilla trip into a real safari.
Not a park, and that is the point. Kivu is a large freshwater lake along the western border with no hippos and no crocodiles, which means you can actually swim in it. Rubavu and Karongi are the usual bases.
Most clients use Kivu as a decompression stop after trekking. Two nights doing nothing is a legitimate itinerary choice and we will not talk you out of it.
Kigali is clean, safe and unusually pleasant, and it is worth a full day rather than an airport transfer. The Kigali Genocide Memorial is the serious stop and the one we recommend to everyone. It is difficult and it is important, and it gives the rest of the country a context you cannot get otherwise.
Beyond that: the craft cooperatives, the coffee scene, and a food and art culture that surprises people who came only for gorillas.
You are assigned a family at the morning briefing, drive to the trailhead, and walk. Trek length ranges from about one hour to six or seven depending on where the family has moved. You get one hour with them.
Rwanda’s advantage is the approach. The trailheads are close to the lodges and the terrain, while steep, is mostly open bamboo and farmland edge rather than the dense tangle of Bwindi.
Both in Nyungwe. Chimp tracking here starts very early — often a 4:30 a.m. departure — and success rates are good but not the near-certainty of Uganda’s Kibale.
Akagera runs morning and afternoon game drives plus a boat trip on Lake Ihema, which is one of the better hippo and bird experiences in the region. Night drives are permitted here, which is uncommon.
Community-run cultural villages near Musanze, coffee and tea cooperative visits, and the Kigali memorial. We book community-run programs rather than staged performances, and we will tell you which is which.
We quote every trip individually because the number depends on your dates, your lodges and your party size. The shape of it, though, is unusually easy to explain in Rwanda: the permit dominates everything else.
Our Rwanda safari packages are all-inclusive — lodging, all meals, a private 4x4 with your own driver-guide, park fees, permits and airport transfers. Prices are per person. International flights, your visa, travel insurance, tips and optional extras sit outside the quote.
Full detail on inclusions is on our safari pricing page.
A Rwanda gorilla trekking permit is $1,500 per person for foreign non-residents, set by the Rwanda Development Board. That covers park entry, the ranger team, and one hour with a gorilla family. It is the highest gorilla permit price in the world, and Rwanda charges it deliberately — low volume, high value, heavily funded conservation.
Here is the part worth knowing. Rwanda offers a 30% discount, bringing the permit to $1,050, if you combine your trek with at least three days and two nights in Akagera or Nyungwe. The discount runs November through May and does not apply in the June–October high season.
That is $450 per person back, for doing something you may well have wanted to do anyway. For two travelers it is $900 — which covers most of the cost of the extra nights that qualified you for it. Almost no operator puts this in front of you, and it is the single most useful thing on this page if your dates are flexible.
Practical limits: 112 permits are issued per day across the habituated families, eight visitors per family, minimum age 15. Peak-season dates go three to six months out. Permits are paid in full at booking and are strictly non-refundable.
You pay All in Africa Safaris USA, registered here in Utah, under a US contract. No wire transfer to an individual, no cryptocurrency, no paying a WhatsApp contact.
All in Africa Safaris (U) Ltd, Nicholas Bright’s licensed Kampala company, has run the ground operation across Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania since 2017 — guides, permits, vehicles, reservations. We look after you from the US side; they execute in-country.
And there is a phone number in Mountain Time with a person on the end of it, which matters more than people expect at 9 p.m. the week before departure.
Every Rwanda trip we run is private. Your own 4x4, your own driver-guide, and a schedule you can change on the morning of.
A seat on a shared departure means a fixed route and other people ready to leave while you are still watching. The gorillas are the same either way. The day is not. Your journey is private; the wildlife encounter is shared.
Rwanda if time is short or comfort matters most — short transfers, excellent roads, superb lodges, $1,500 permits. Uganda if value and variety matter more — $800 permits, more driving, and far more to do once you are there. Many of our clients do both countries in one trip, which is the answer if you can spare ten days.
Three days covers Kigali, one trek and out. Five or six lets you add Akagera or Nyungwe — and in low season that addition also unlocks the discounted permit, so the longer trip can cost less per person than you would guess.
Most people are. It is steep walking at altitude on uneven ground, for anywhere from one to six hours, with no technical difficulty. Tell the rangers your honest fitness at the briefing, because they use it to assign families. Hire a porter for around $20 — they carry your bag and, when it comes to it, help pull you up the hill.
Rwanda is consistently rated among the safest countries in Africa for visitors, and Kigali is safer than most American cities of comparable size. Realistic risks are altitude, sunburn and stomach upset. Yellow fever vaccination is required if you are arriving from a country with risk of transmission — check current guidance with the CDC and your doctor. We require travel insurance covering medical evacuation.
June to September and December to February are dry and the most reliable for trekking underfoot. March to May is the long rains — wetter, greener, quieter, and the window where the combination permit discount applies. Rwanda is high country, so pack for cold mornings regardless of season.
