4 Day Rwanda Gorilla Tour
We best recommend the 4 Day Rwanda Gorilla Tour & Golden Monkey Trekking Tour for a business traveler or solo traveler who wants a short guided Rwanda Safari or a self-planner to add it to their Kenya savanna safari. It’s also a great addition to the great migrations safari in Serengeti and the nearby small Uganda savanna safari destinations.
Day 1: Arrival and transfer to Volcanoes National Park
Arrive in Kigali and process your immigration and entry requirements (e.e., you maybe need to show your Covid-19 negative test certificate to Vaccine Certificate). Your private Rwanda Gorillas & Golden Monkey Trekking Tour guide will be waiting to transfer you to your hotel.
Meet and greet by your private tour driver/guide. After a briefing session, drive North of Kigali to Kinigi at the foot of Volcanoes National Park, through Rwanda’s most beautiful countryside, and immerse your imagination in nature’s own tranquility.
Drive time is about 3 hours with great drive speed to allow you to enjoy the scenery. Check into the lodge and later enjoy dinner surrounded by the evergreen tropical forest.
Accommodation and meals: One&Only Gorilla’s Nest (luxury); Dinner
Day 2: Gorilla Tracking in Volcanoes NP Jungle
With an early breakfast, drive to the park headquarters for gorilla briefing (45 minutes). This is the Rwanda Gorillas & Golden Monkey Trekking Tour’s major highlight that brought you to these jungles, so take a breath, collect all your intrinsic emotions and excitement and get ready to be wowed. Make sure your expectations are floating; we don’t want to drown in too much of less or more than we bargained for.
When venturing into this gigantic forest, a packed lunch, comfortable clothes, shoes, and a walking stick is a must before. The time spent gorilla tracking is unpredictable, and it varies from 2 to 8 hours before encountering the family of these great gentle apes of Africa.
The location of each gorilla family depends on temperature, their feeding range, and movement of the previous day with the trackers ahead of your tracking group. Strict guidelines will be issued at the trailhead briefing point; make sure you remember the most important ones.
After trekking the montane woods, you’ll find the great apes and spend strictly one hour observing their peculiar habits, including feeding, grooming, socializing, and family squabbles. The sight of these incredible creatures is the climax of this entire safari. Later retire for an overnight at the lodge.
Accommodation and meals: One&Only Gorilla’s Nest (luxury); Lunch, Breakfast, Dinner, and drinking water
Day 3: Tracking the Golden Monkey & Visiting Dian Fossey’s Resting Home
Take an early breakfast and join your Rwanda Gorillas & Golden Monkey Trekking Tour driver for a quick drive to the trailhead. Of course, you’ll carry your packed lunches because we don’t expect a quickie on this one, right!
You’ll be briefed by the park rangers and then escorted into the misty jungles to find your nemesis. These fragile cute little golden monkeys light up the jungle and alter all your perceptions about wild creatures that occupy jungles across the world. It’s a moment you want to keep forever, so make sure you’re ready to be rewarded for your courage to come to Africa. You will not stay with them for more than one hour; the intelligent guys think you may agitate their inner beings and maybe transfer some diseases (you know) if you stay longer.
After those heartfelt moments with the golden monkeys, the guides will lead you through the forest path to the legend that made all that trip possible from back in 1962, the legendary primatologist Dian Fossey’s grave. That little lady took all the guts to protect the mountain gorillas from savages and let the world know about the treasure we had berried deep in our African jungle, so a visit to her grave is warranted; take a knee!
Later retire at the lodge to meditate about your encounters this day and the previous; these are days you want to talk about and hold on to forever because they’re hard and not cheap to come by. Relax at the lodge, share your experience, put together your photo slideshow, and take in the African air.
Accommodation and meals: One&Only Gorilla’s Nest (luxury); Lunch, Breakfast, Dinner, and drinking water
Day 4: Transfer to Kigali with Optional Activities Enroute
With an early sumptuous breakfast, drive lazily back into Kigali. Take a city excursion or the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Gisozi and the Rwanda National Museum visit; the time spent in these places depends on your departure flight.
Alternatively, this can also be done at the beginning of the Rwanda Gorilla Safari before we head into the volcanoes NP. Besides, what can top the experience you just had in the jungle, right?
No accommodation: Breakfast, Lunch, and drinking water
