4-Day Akagera Wetlands & Savannah Birding Tour, Rwanda

Day-by-day itinerary

1. Day1
   

   Nyandungu Wetland in Kigali and the Drive to Akagera

   Our birding guide collects you early from your hotel or Kigali International Airport and starts the trip in the city at the Nyandungu Urban Wetland Eco-Tourism Park, a restored marsh in eastern Kigali with boardwalks and trails. In the cool of the morning look for the papyrus gonolek, white-winged swamp warbler, malachite kingfisher, African swamphen and a range of weavers and herons. After a couple of hours you drive east to Akagera, about two and a half hours, stopping at wetlands along the way. Akagera covers 1,122 square kilometres, and its mix of lakes, papyrus swamp, woodland and open grassland gives it a bird list of close to 500 species, the longest in Rwanda for a single park. You check in at your lodge on the shore of Lake Ihema for lunch, then spend the late afternoon birding around the lodge and the lake edge, where African fish eagles call from the dead trees. Dinner and overnight at Ruzizi Tented Lodge.

   • Nyandungu wetland, drive to Akagera
   • Ruzizi Tented Lodge
   • Lunch, dinner
2. Day2
   

   Lake Ihema Boat Trip and the Southern Lakes

   The morning starts on the water with a birding boat trip on Lake Ihema, Rwanda’s second-largest lake, which takes you along papyrus edges that are hard to reach on foot. Water birds are everywhere: African open-billed and yellow-billed storks, goliath and purple herons, African darters, pied and malachite kingfishers, and colonies of weavers in the reeds. The shoebill has been recorded in Akagera’s swamps, but it is rare here and a sighting would be a real bonus. In the afternoon you bird the woodland and lake shores of the south, including Lake Shakani and Lake Birengero, for the Ross’s turaco, white-headed barbet, brown-crowned tchagra and Meyer’s parrot. Hippos, buffalo and waterbuck are common along the lakes. Dinner and overnight at Ruzizi Tented Lodge.

   • Lake Ihema boat trip, southern lakes
   • Ruzizi Tented Lodge
   • Breakfast, lunch, dinner
3. Day3
   

   Full Day on the Northern Savannah

   With a packed breakfast and lunch you drive north to the open grassland and acacia country around the Kilala Plains and Lake Rwanyakazinga. This is where you search for Akagera’s specials: the red-faced barbet, a species of a small area of East Africa, the crested barbet, sooty chat, white-headed black chat, Souza’s shrike, Tabora cisticola and the black-bellied bustard. Grey crowned cranes feed in the wet grass, and raptors such as the bateleur, Wahlberg’s eagle and the long-crested eagle hunt over the plains. This is also big game country, with elephant, giraffe, zebra, buffalo and the lions and rhinos returned to the park in recent years, so the day mixes birding stops with game viewing. You return to the lodge in the late afternoon. Dinner and overnight at Ruzizi Tented Lodge.

   • Northern savannah birding
   • Ruzizi Tented Lodge
   • Breakfast, lunch, dinner
4. Day4
   

   Morning Birding and Return to Kigali

   A final early session around the lake and the woodland near the lodge gives you another chance at birds you may have missed, such as the papyrus canary or the swamp flycatcher. After breakfast you drive back to Kigali, about two and a half to three hours, with a stop at a roadside wetland if the timing allows. We drop you at your hotel or at Kigali International Airport. This tour pairs well with three days of forest birding in Nyungwe for the Albertine Rift endemics, which together give you most of Rwanda’s habitats in a week.

   • Morning birding, return to Kigali
   • Breakfast