1 day Rwanda gorilla trek safaris are the shortest kinds of gorilla safaris apparently. These kinds of safaris happen in Rwanda because of Volcanoes National Park’s (a place where you track mountain gorillas from) proximity to Kigali. The park is just a 2 hours drive from Kigali which is partly why a portion of gorilla trekkers opt for Rwanda and not Uganda or Congo.
Unlike other kinds of gorilla safaris, one day gorilla trekking safaris in Rwanda can be done best when a tourist is already in Kigali, Rwanda because it calls for a very early pick up and a late drop off as well. The journey between Kigali and Ruhengeri, Musanze Province takes a maximum of 3 hours, implicating we need to depart Kigali not later than 4:00 am if we are to make it for the 7:30 pre-briefing at the park’s headquarters. Whilst on your journey, you will enjoy the smooth roads and beautiful plains of Rwanda towards your arrival. This is the perfect moment to begin taking photographs for your Rwanda gorilla adventure which you shouldn’t over do since you need to reserve extra battery for photo moments during your actual trek.
When we arrive at Volcanoes National Park, you will first have a heavy breakfast meal before proceeding to the park’s headquarters at Kinigi for a pre-briefing session by a selected park warden. During this meeting, you will be briefed about the dos and donts of gorilla trekking hence, you should try to be extremely attentive to whatever the warden has to stay and abide to the precautions and advice as well whilst on the trek. Also feel free to ask any questions and try to open up about your physical fitness status as well so as to be allocated in a group that matches your pace.
Please note that gorilla trekking is very physically challenging in nature and you ought to have a very heavy breakfast meal to energize your self for the trek. Alternatively, you can carry a few energy drinks with you which works too. At exactly 8:30 am, you will be transferred to the respective starting point of your gorilla trek where you will be allocated Rwanda gorilla groups at random but as you know, not all gorilla groups will reward you the best experience. Specific groups like the Susa Group as the top picks for tourists but randon allocation doesn’t guarantee you any spot for it. So how do we go about it? We have strong and established relationships with park wardens that affords us the capability to convince them so that they place a clients in specific gorilla groups in case of any requests from the client’s side. This usually turns out positive! Though we don’t guarantee that we get positive responses all the time, we make sure we try our best to have that convincing tongue.
The duration of your trek will fall between 1 to 8 hours considering the way mountain gorillas are moving. On a lucky day, it might take you minutes to spot a gorilla while over an hour on some occasions. Upon finishing your trek, you will set of for a return journey to Kigali where you will choose between a drop off to your hotel or rather a departure depending on how you will arranged for your departure flight. In case of an overnight, we can arrange that for you as well and drop you off at the airport (free airport transfer) the following day.
Volcanoes National Park’s proximity to Rwanda’s capital city of Kigali has long rewarded Rwanda a competitive advantage of holding short gorilla trips. The journey to Ruhengeri is very rewarding in terms of views and from there is where you see why Rwanda was named the “land of a thousand hills and mountains.” Gorilla tracking is a physically challenging activity that could last for minutes or rather hours depending on movements of these gentle endangered primates.
