With sprawling national parks home to the big five, and a dynamic capital city boasting innovative restaurants, independent galleries and boutique stores, Siobhan Grogan discovers that there’s more to Rwanda than its gorillas.
Through the undergrowth, I can hear chomping. A few steps further and I spot my first mountain gorilla, cocooned by thick green leaves and munching mindlessly on a stalk of wild celery torn from the nearest bush. As I approach, he raises his head, looks me square in the eye for a few heart-stopping seconds, then carries on eating. Suddenly, there’s a rustle behind me and I whip round, just in time to see the dominant male silverback streaking through the vegetation towards me. Though I nearly fall over my own feet trying to get out of his path, he lollops straight past me disinterestedly.
VOLCANOES NATIONAL PARK
The gorillas are Rwanda’s tourism trump card. The country is one of just three East African nations where it’s possible to encounter the endangered animals in their natural habitat, and is by far the most accessible. Only 96 permits to see them are issued each day, each one costing a hefty £1,185. The money goes directly to conservation efforts and local communities to protect and expand the gorillas’ habitat and prevent poaching. The scheme has proved hugely successful: in the early 80s, there were fewer than 250 mountain gorillas in the Virunga Mountains, now there are more than 600.
All live within Volcanoes National Park, a vast leafy blanket of rainforest, swamps and grasslands covering the slopes of the dormant volcanoes in the Virguna Mountains. The area was once home to Dian Fossey, the American conservationist who set up camp here in the 1960s to study the gorillas and devote her life to their protection. Fossey was later immortalised by Sigourney Weaver in the hit film Gorillas in the Mist, and her story is now recounted at the smart Ellen Campus nearby. This slick education centre and science lab was built with financing from the US TV host Ellen Degeneres, and is dedicated to continuing Fossey’s work saving the gorillas.
I’m staying within the National Park itself at Virunga Lodge, a tranquil collection of ten stone cottages, 2300 metres above sea level. Each one has a stone fireplace, raffia furniture, an open-air shower, an outdoor fire pit and a terrace with lounge chairs overlooking a glossy lake and mist-encircled volcano. Meals are communal and eaten in a central building made for swapping stories after jungle treks, with armchairs arranged around open fires, local artwork and oversized wicker lamps.
It’s just-rustic-enough, yet you can’t help but feel pampered. There are free daily massages to ease mountain-weary muscles, avocados plucked straight from the trees outside for breakfast and crisp gin and tonics served around a blazing fire pit at sunset. I’m woken at 5am for my hike to the gorillas by a pot of creamy Rwandan coffee delivered by one staff member singing outside my cottage; when I return, my hiking boots are whisked away and returned looking cleaner than when I first bought them.
Virunga Lodge. Image Credit: Visit Rwanda
The lodge also takes its responsibility to the community seriously. Local guide Nepo leads us on a walk to the village on the hill below, where smart uniformed school children wave and gather round giggling, eager to try out their English on us. There’s no running water so the lodge supplies water tanks and solar panels for those without electricity, and has also donated sheep to each family in the four closest villages, which provide natural fertiliser for crops and lambs that can be sold for income.
KIGALI
It’s a mistake to come to Rwanda just to see the gorillas, magnificent though they are. Capital Kigali is under three hours’ drive from Volcanoes, past leafy tea, cassava and banana plantations, roadside markets and never-ending cyclists, their bikes loaded with everything from giant sacks of potatoes to baskets of hens.
The city’s Genocide Memorial Museum is a harrowing first stop, but essential to understand the country’s horrifying history and the miraculous way it has moved forward. It explains the shocking origins and brutal reality of the 1994 genocide in which more than one million Tutsi people were killed in just 100 days. Over 250,000 are buried at the memorial itself.
A boutique store in Kigali, Rwanda
But, the country has rebuilt itself since its darkest days. Kigali is booming, with gleaming modern buildings springing up each month, a flourishing food scene, countless independent galleries, artisan coffee shops and boutique clothes stores. There’s a free seven-kilometre running track through the city centre, an urban eco-park created from restored wetlands and spotless streets at every turn. The country became one of the first in the world to ban single-use plastic bags in 2008, and now dedicates one morning each month to mandatory community work, from litter picking to street sweeping. Tailors sit by their sewing machines on almost every corner. Choose fabric from stalls in the narrow, hectic lanes of Kimironko Market and they’ll make almost any outfit you fancy within the hour – comically, one even reminds me that I’m supposed to haggle over the price, not just accept their first quote.
Creative Afro-fusion cuisine is served at Meza Malonga in Kigali
My base in the city is boutique hotel Heaven Rwanda, which first opened as a modern African restaurant in 2008 employing orphans of the genocide. It has since trained over 1000 Rwandans in hospitality and built The Retreat next door, a luxury solar-powered second hotel where King Charles stayed when he visited in 2022. Hip restaurants are everywhere. Repub Lounge serves sharing bowls of Rwandan dishes including goat stew, fried plantain and sauteed aubergine on a leafy patio filled with lunching locals, while trendy Kozo Kigali has an Afro-Asian menu including freshly made sushi and beef skewers with spicy banana peri-peri.
Eagle View has comfort-food favourites and an astonishing city-wide panorama from its terrace, while chef-owner Dieuveil Malonga opened his restaurant Meza Malonga in 2020; it’s already been recognised by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants – and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s awarded Africa’s first Michelin star soon. Tucked upstairs in a non-descript building in a deserted suburb, it offers just one ten-course tasting menu serving whatever is best on the day, for us this included tree tomato sorbet, beetroot and mango tart with cassava chips and aubergine tagine with peanut sauce.
AKAGERA NATIONAL PARK
Gorilla’s may be Rwanda’s most famous residents, but they’re not the country’s only animals. The less-visited Akagera National Park on the border with Tanzania is home to the big five, including more than 140 elephants and around 20 leopards. The park was almost destroyed following the genocide when fleeing Rwandans returned with their livestock, devastating the region’s biodiversity and killing the entire lion population. The government has since stepped in to reintroduce wildlife, install fencing between the park and nearby villages, and implement anti-poaching measures. Now, a percentage of the park’s revenue goes to local community projects and the animals are thriving, with more than double the populations of 2010.
The Presidential Suite at Mantis Akagera Game Lodge
Spread over more than 430 square miles, Akagera is a wild, beautiful expanse of savannahs, swamps and scrublands where you rarely meet another vehicle. I stay in the park itself at the contemporary Mantis Akagera Game Lodge, where an outdoor pool, restaurant and fire pit overlooks Lake Ihema. During twice-daily game drives, I spy a male lion hidden in the bushes tearing a carcass apart, elegant giraffes lunching on leaves, rhinos snuffling by the side of the road and an elephant twice the height of our jeep blocking our path. On a night drive, a hyena’s eyes glimmer in our headlights, while an enormous herd of buffalo move silently through the long grass.
Taking a hot air balloon over Akagera National Park
One of the best ways to see animals here is by boat. On a lake cruise, hippos wallow in the water, vanishing beneath the surface as we approach, while crocodiles sun themselves on the bank. There are also more than 500 bird species to spot, including the African fish eagle, the saddle-billed stork and the African grey hornbill. On my final day, I rise before dawn to sail over the vast, empty plains by hot air balloon. Looking down over the serene sweeping grasslands and forested hills, it’s hard to imagine the horrors this country has seen, or the struggle it has faced to recover. Gorillas may have brought the tourists in since, but it’s Rwanda’s super-human resilience and progressive spirit that make this country truly extraordinary.
Find out more at Visit Rwanda
Lead Image: Volcanoes National Park. Image Credit: Visit Rwanda
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