3-Day Akagera Big Five Safari, Rwanda

Day-by-day itinerary

1. Day1
   

   Kigali to Akagera National Park, Boat Trip on Lake Ihema

   Our guide collects you from your hotel in Kigali or from Kigali International Airport after breakfast. The drive east to Akagera covers about 110 km and takes two and a half to three hours, through Rwamagana and Kayonza, past banana plantations, terraced hills and roadside fruit sellers. You enter the park at the southern gate and stop at the reception centre for a short briefing on the park’s history. Akagera was founded in 1934 and covers 1,122 square kilometres of savannah, woodland, swamp and lakes along the Tanzania border. It has been run by African Parks with the Rwanda Development Board since 2010, and that partnership brought back the lions and rhinos lost during the 1990s. After lunch at your lodge you join a boat trip on Lake Ihema, Rwanda’s second-largest lake, for hippo pods, Nile crocodiles, African fish eagles and herons along the papyrus edge. Dinner and overnight at Ruzizi Tented Lodge on the lakeshore.

   • Drive to Akagera, Lake Ihema boat trip
   • Ruzizi Tented Lodge
   • Lunch, dinner
2. Day2
   

   Full Day of Game Drives in Northern Akagera, Optional Night Drive

   You leave early with a packed breakfast and lunch and drive north through the woodland to the open grassland around the Mutumba Hills and the Kilala Plains, the best game country in the park. This is where you look for lions: seven were brought from South Africa in 2015, and the population has grown well since. The park’s eastern black rhinos arrived in 2017, and in 2021 it received 30 southern white rhinos, the largest single rhino move on record, so the northern plains now offer a fair chance of a rhino sighting. Elephant, buffalo, Masai giraffe, zebra, topi, eland and the small oribi are common, while leopard is shy and seen mostly by luck. Back at the lodge in the late afternoon, you can join the park’s night drive (optional), which looks for leopard, hyena, genet, bushbabies and the white-tailed mongoose with a spotlight. Dinner and overnight at Ruzizi Tented Lodge.

   • Full day of game drives, optional night drive
   • Ruzizi Tented Lodge
   • Breakfast, lunch, dinner
3. Day3
   

   Morning Game Drive and Return to Kigali

   A last game drive in the cool of the morning takes you along the lake edges in the south of the park, where buffalo and waterbuck come to drink and the birdlife is busy; Akagera has close to 500 bird species, including the papyrus gonolek and, very occasionally, the shoebill. After breakfast you leave the park and drive back to Kigali, about two and a half to three hours. If your flight is in the evening, there is time for a stop at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, where about 250,000 victims are buried, or for lunch and a walk around the city’s markets and craft shops. We drop you at your hotel or at Kigali International Airport. This trip pairs well with a gorilla trek in Volcanoes National Park, which can be added before or after.

   • Morning game drive, return to Kigali
   • Breakfast