Rwanda gorilla tracking safari

Today, you will set off early after breakfast for the park headquarters, where you will register for the gorilla trekking. Once you've been assigned a group and have had a briefing from your guide you will be driven to the trailhead where you will start the walk. Trackers leave before the tourist groups to locate the gorilla groups, so your guide should know where to take you. Once you've found the group, you will have one hour with them to take photos and observe them as they interact.

After breakfast today you will set off to track the golden monkeys in the Volcanoes National Park. This will be a completely different but just as rewarding experience to tracking the gorillas. You will track the monkeys with a guide through the forest of the Volcanoes National Park and spend an hour with them once you find them. The walk is generally easier than the trek to the gorillas, although this depends on the monkeys' movements. There are two habituated troops of golden monkeys, both of which have around 80 members in the family. They are incredibly lively, so they can be quite hard to photograph until they settle down or go into a clearing, but they are fascinating to watch leaping from tree to tree!

You can have a leisurely breakfast this morning before setting off with your driver for Lake Kivu. The drive takes around an hour and a half, and the rolling hills that characterize Rwanda's landscape become much more dramatic and cliff-like as you drive on. You will pass small farming villages and banana plantations before descending into the valley to Gisenyi, north of Lake Kivu. Your driver will take you to your hotel, where you can relax for the night unwinding and resting your weary legs after two days of trekking in the Volcanoes National Park.

Today is free for relaxing or exploring Lake Kivu — you can go swimming in the hotel pool, or in the lake itself, have a tour of Gisenyi town, or hire a boat to visit some of the nearby islands on the lake. You can decide on the day what you'd like to do and your driver will help you with all of your arrangements.

This morning, you will depart Lake Kivu and drive back to Kigali Airport. The drive will take around two and a half hours, or longer if you stop frequently to take photographs. On the way, you will pass the Virunga Volcanoes and Ruhengeri.