Nyungwe Forest National Park Explorer Safari

Overview

Nyungwe Forest National Park protects one of the largest and best-preserved montane rainforests in Africa — an ancient, cloud-wrapped wilderness that survived the last Ice Age and today blankets the mountains of south-western Rwanda. Straddling the Congo-Nile divide, its ridges give rise to streams feeding both the Congo and the Nile, and one spring here is considered among the most remote sources of the great river. This is a forest of superlatives: over 1,000 square kilometres of primary rainforest, thirteen species of primate, more than 300 birds including nearly 30 Albertine Rift endemics, 1,000 plant species and countless orchids, butterflies and frogs.

The stars are its primates — habituated chimpanzees whose dawn calls echo through the canopy, and vast, spectacular troops of Angolan colobus, sometimes 400 strong, that ripple through the treetops. Nyungwe's celebrated canopy walkway, the only one in East Africa, carries you 70 metres above the forest floor for a bird's-eye view of this emerald world. Cool, high and malaria-free, and now managed by African Parks, Nyungwe offers a rainforest experience utterly distinct from Rwanda's gorillas and savannah.