My Week In Rwanda – Helicopters, Gorillas, and Tetanus

I have returned from my third visit to the wonderful Rwanda.  But this was the first time I’ve spent the entire trip actually just in Rwanda.

Historically, Rwanda has been the one-night stands of safari.  Fly in, trek the gorillas, have a moment staring into the eyes of a large primate that looks like your hairy uncle, then immediately head off to Kenya or Tanzania for a proper safari. That’s how I’ve always done it.  That’s still what 99% of our clients do.

But Rwanda is in constant change, and now the luxury market has welcomed Wilderness Magashi Peninsula in Akagera National Park.  Akagera is the one part of Rwanda where you get the full safari cast: lions, elephants, giraffes, singing meerkats, dancing hyenas, all that jazz.  Up until now, Rwanda has been gorillas and… more gorillas.  Incredible, yes.  But that’s like coming to England and just eating fish and chips.  We also have….ok, it’s just fish and chips.

Now you can actually build a proper Rwanda itinerary without needing to hop across the border afterwards.

Let me talk you through my trip.

Getting there

My days of airline snobbery are well behind me; I’ll take whatever is the easiest route.  No more flying through Dubai to get to Johannesburg from London (did that a few times).  For my trip to Tanzania in July, I (last year) booked Ethiopian Airlines over Qatar, as the timing was better, even if Qatar absolutely shits all over Ethiopian.  In this case, a direct flight from London to Kigali on RwandAir is the easiest route.  Plus, it’s a night flight, so in theory I can sleep the whole way.

Now y’all know I don’t bother with flight reviews.  In summary, would I fly them again?  Yes, for convenience.  The seating on the way out was 1-2-1, so far, so good.  Yet it felt like sitting on the wing, so uncomfortable was the seat.  And I’m sure the in-flight entertainment had Casablanca under their “New In” section, so old it was.  On the way back, an equipment swap meant it was one of those horrible 2-2-2 seat configurations where I had to lap dance for my partner every time I needed a piss.  And I’m getting old now, so that’s frequent.  

They also have this fucking strange thing where they turn the lights on and start breakfast nearly two hours before you land at 6 am. It’s mental.  On the return flight, it was like boiling frog syndrome, with the lights gradually turning on 3 hours before landing, getting brighter and brighter until the entire cabin looked like a hospital operating theatre.  Once again, we landed at 6:20 am.  The flight departs at 22:40.  Who wants to be woken up at 3 am for breakfast?  Unless it’s hand-served by Jesus himself and consists of unicorn wagyu forged by angels, count me out.

A few years ago, no chance I’d fly RwanAir, but since kids my body is hardwired to survive without sleep and I can suck it up.  Direct flight wins for me.

Helicopters

When I arrived in Kigali, I flew a helicopter over to the newly opened Magashi Peninsula.  Most of the helicopter options in Rwanda are in Agusta choppers, with variations of 139, 119 and 109.  They clearly are big blog reader fans, as they upgraded me for all my trips into a 139, which apparently is better? It’s certainly more expensive.  Almost twice as price of a 109 and more than twice of a 119.

Rwanda is a small country, but with the winding roads, often single file, it can take many an hour to get between lodges.  Drive time to see the gorillas is anywhere between 2 and 4 hours, and for the safari it’s 5 and 6 hours.  The helicopter was 30 minutes.  However, I did have to wait almost an hour for them to take me to the helicopter, as another group had the nerve to be going to Singita Kwitonda just before me.  After landing at Kigali International Airport, I waited in the lounge for an hour, then had to go through security again, which all felt rather cumbersome as it was so slow, to then immediately get on the chopper. I’m still going to recommend it, it still likely saved me 3.5 hours, and if no one else was flying that day it may have saved me over 4 hours.  If they can speed up the security screening, it’d be amazing.

Oh, and the helicopter is awesome, extremely comfortable, and the views are spectacular too.  Some companies rely on made-up bullshitty expressions of slogans, but Rwanda truly is “The Land of a Thousand Hills”.

Driving

It wasn’t all glamour in the helicopters — I did actually drive some places as well.  And in Rwanda, I’ve always had a driver, particularly for the organisation around the gorilla treks.  I would never send a client to Rwanda without one.  They stay with you for the entire trip, and it makes life so much easier.

Patrick, my driver, was an absolute legend and was essentially like having a full-time concierge. He’d previously interned at several of the national parks, so he knew everything completely off by heart — permits, timings, logistics, where to go, where not to go.  I barely had to think about anything because he had usually taken care of it before I’d even thought to ask.

Every activity, there he was to take me there, collect me afterwards, and do his best to prevent me from injuring myself any more than I already managed to do on my own.

Big Five Safari in Akagera

So the opener, and really the whole point of the trip, was Magashi Peninsula.  Like all the properties I’ll discuss here, I’ll write full reviews, so this is really a very brief overview.  But suffice to say, I was actually impressed not just with the lodge, but the area.  I was not expecting it to be so abundant.  Or so beautiful.  Or so void of humans.  The fact that it borders Tanzania certainly makes sense why it would be such a great area.

Gorillas

Next up: Bisate Reserve. Didn’t you already go to Bisate in 2018, you might say?  Why yes, voices in my head, I did.  But this is Bisate Reserve, which opened in 2023 and is like the awesomer version.

From here, the main focus is gorilla trekking.  What more is there to say that I haven’t already said?  Truly one of life’s best experiences.  These animals are so chilled out around you, you start to feel you’re part of the family.  Except the gorillas actually look like they want me there, so in ways they’re better than family.  A lot cheaper too, none of them asked for Mothers Day gifts.

I love up close with nature.  Wild dogs nibbling at my shoes, walking with cheetahs, whale sharks off Thanda Island, dolphins off Mnemba.  But gorillas are special.  And until a polar bear invites me to play Call of Duty, perhaps the most special.

Side note: I’m delighted that locals can now experience this, as the government has introduced a $200 fee for locals outside peak season.  Previously, it was simply unobtainable, and you couldn’t talk to anyone about it.  Now they get to understand the joy of it too.

Tetanus

Ok, just to be clear, I did not get tetanus in Rwanda.  I did, however, get injured and was bleeding all over myself.  I either picked up this injury from winning hand-to-hand combat against a silverback gorilla, or from tripping over a rock whilst almost stationary beside the car at the end of the trek.  We shall never know.

All the same, for the second time in my safari career, I somehow found myself on the phone with a Wilderness doctor.  I must be in their Top 10 Worst Customers by now.  They probably have someone on standby any time I travel.  She very innocently asked when I last had a tetanus shot and, well… whoops.  Turns out it expired three years ago.  So out came a doctor to see me, in my room, to bandage me up and administer a tetanus shot and some antibiotics, just to make sure I didn’t become patient zero the next time a gorilla decided to fondle me.

I get better healthcare in Rwanda than I do in England.

Chimpanzees

I finished up at One&Only Nyungwe House, again taking a helicopter. It’s about a 30-minute flight versus well over five hours by car, which didn’t take a whole lot of internal debate.

You are really coming here for one thing and one thing only: chimpanzee trekking.

Based on client feedback over the years, my experience was actually very good.  Some people have described their chimpanzee trekking as essentially glaring at vague silhouettes high up in the trees, where they’d have better luck seeing one using a kaleidoscope and some acid.

I managed to get close.  Extremely close to one particular fella — I’m talking maybe two metres away — which was pretty impressive given how fast and chaotic chimps are.  They don’t exactly sit politely on a branch waiting for their portrait to be taken.  Nor do they yell “CAESAR!”, which was disappointing to learn.

That close encounter almost made up for having to stay at One&Only Nyungwe House, which is, as the saying goes: shit.  It felt like it had been designed as some sort of experiment to see whether, after the joy of gorilla trekking, it was still possible to make me miserable.  It almost succeeded.

Kigali

And then, to finish it off, I went to the recently opened Pinnacle in Kigali.  Kigali has some pretty awful options, with the “luxury” option historically having been The Retreat.  Which would be more aptly called “Retreat From Here”.  What a dump. It’s the sort of place where you expect some toothless local to appear out of the mist and warn you not to stay there because everyone who does ends up murdered by dawn.

We booked a day room there in 2024 and immediately regretted it.  My main memories are the mosquitoes and the overwhelming shame I felt for spending over $500 a night on a room whose primary function was to exist while we waited for our flight.

Pinnacle has tried something completely different.  The hard product is absolutely extraordinary for a city hotel. I’m talking not just good for Africa, but world-class.  I shit you not.  I went in ready to laugh at the owner’s massive testicles, but came away understanding it, even if I don’t agree with the pricing.  Base rates start around $3,000 a night.  In Kigali.  Which… is certainly a strategy.

I’ll have more thoughts on that in another post.

Conclusion

What a wonderful trip.  I was greeted home by Lucie saying, “you seemed like you were living the dream”.  And I was.  Even if One&Only is, technically and legally, like a massacre bestowed upon us by the vengeance of demons, hellbent on bringing eternal damnation to the meek that walk the earth.

Back in 2017, when Bisate Lodge opened, Rwanda had exactly one luxury lodge.  Now there are four just for the gorillas.  More are coming, including my bestest buddies at &Beyond.  Kigali now has a genuinely extraordinary property in The Pinnacle.  You can do the Big Five in proper luxury in Akagera.  And there’s more still on the way.  For a country that most people previously treated as a quick gorilla detour before heading to Tanzania or Kenya, that’s quite a transformation in less than a decade.

For me, the whole trip was incredible.  For you, if this is a once-in-a-lifetime safari, I would still suggest the Serengeti or the Mara over Akagera.  There is a reason those places are so famous and have been the gold standard for safari for decades.  But if you’re someone coming for your second, third, or — like me — roughly your 105th safari, Rwanda is now absolutely worth the trip on its own.