every hour | 8 nights | from $6,980 per person
The Rwanda Vacation Package Where the Permits Hold the Clock
This Rwanda vacation package runs on permit times rather than on preference. Eight nights, two gorilla walks, and a schedule that was fixed before you booked it.
What every hour means here
- Hours already spoken for
- About nine hours of an average day are already placed, counting the briefing, the walk and the drive back to the bed. On the two gorilla days it runs closer to twelve.
- The earliest you must be somewhere
- 4:45 a.m., on one morning, for the chimpanzee walk in Nyungwe. Three further mornings put you at a park gate by 7:00, and breakfast on those days is eaten standing up.
- The longest stretch that is yours
- Five hours, from about 1:00 p.m. until dinner on day six, beside Lake Kivu. Nothing else in the eight days gives you more than two hours in a row.
- Who chooses where you eat
- A permit time decides where you are for most of the morning, and the guide decides the rest of it. Meals land where the road allows, which on the Nyungwe day means one place and no alternative.
- What happens if you skip a day
- Tell the guide the night before and the vehicle leaves without you; the bed and the driver stay paid either way. No money comes back on a permit day, because the $1,500 was spent when the date was issued, and the paper cannot be moved to another name or another morning.
- Who this shape of day does not suit
- Anyone who decides the day at breakfast, anyone who will not walk uphill for four hours at 8,000 feet, and families with a child under 15, since the trek has a hard age floor and there is no version of this trip without it.
The last row costs this company bookings and stays on the page anyway. A shape of day that does not suit you is far cheaper to find out about here than on the third morning.
Where the nine hours actually go
- Two gorilla permits, dated and written in your name, with a 7:00 a.m. briefing at the park office on both days. The walk runs anywhere from two hours to seven, depending on where the family fed the night before.
- The second permit on day five is the real protection in this trip: if the first walk is rained out or the family has climbed high into the bamboo, day five is your other chance.
- About 21 hours in the vehicle across eight days: 2.5 hours Kigali to Musanze, roughly 7 south to Nyungwe, 3.5 down to Lake Kivu, 3.5 back to the capital.
- One guide and one driver with you from about 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on all eight days, including the road days.
- Eight nights of beds, breakfast every morning, dinner on six evenings.
- A chimpanzee walk in Nyungwe leaving at 4:45 a.m., plus a canopy walkway slot at a fixed time later the same morning.
- Park fees, briefings, and a 90 minute visit to the national memorial in Kigali on the first afternoon, booked for a set hour.
Hours and money that sit outside the figure
- Flights into Kigali, priced on their own: $1,100 to $1,900 per person round trip from the East Coast, at the top of that in July and August.
- Lunch on six days, $10 to $25 a head, eaten wherever the road allows rather than where you would choose.
- Porters at $20 each per trek, paid in cash on the trail. Two travelers usually take two.
- Drinks, laundry, and anything bought at the roadside stalls.
- Single occupancy adds $1,150 across the eight nights.
- A missed briefing. Arrive after it starts and that permit is finished; a replacement is another $1,500 and is rarely free inside a week.
What it costs
from $6,980 per person
- Covering
- 8 nights, a permit-led schedule somebody else holds.
- Assuming
- Two people to a room, unless the six rows above say otherwise for your case.
- Pushed up by
- The month, the grade of room, how late you leave it, and how many of the hours you want somebody else to hold.
- Fixed when
- An operator puts it in writing with its own name on it. Until then it marks the bottom of a range that genuinely happened.
You settle with the operator, through whatever system they run. This site gathers nothing and no card ever arrives at this company.
Months that work, months that do not
June to mid September and mid December to February are the dry runs. Trails hold together, trek times sit at the short end, and the road hours behave. Those are the months this schedule was built for.
March, April and May are the long rain. Mud gets deep enough to double a walk, cloud sits on the sector until midday, and the descent to Kivu turns slow. We would talk you out of the last week of March through the first week of May, and we say so before you ask.
There is a second problem with the good months. Permits for July and August are usually gone six to nine months ahead. Book in April for August and you take the dates that remain, then the other seven days are cut to fit them. Booking eleven months out is how you get a choice.
What is still open at confirmation
Four things get settled when the permits are held rather than before. Which park sector you walk in, which decides the drive from Musanze and how early day three starts. Whether nights six and seven stay at Lake Kivu or you come back to Kigali a day early. Single or sharing, since that moves the figure by $1,150. And your honest walking pace, declared in writing, because the rangers group people by it and a wrong answer costs you the day.