Visiting Nyungwe National Park

If you read my Kigali page, you’ll know that I lost the hard drive containing the majority of my photos from Rwanda. Fortunately, I was able to recover quite a few more from Nyungwe National Park. This park was the highlight of my visit to the country. I absolutely love places where you can look out and see nothing but natural forest stretching for miles, and Nyungwe offers plenty of that. The park has a lot of activities, with chimpanzee tracking being one of the most popular. I chose not to do it because I had already spent an arm and a leg tracking gorillas in neighboring Congo and was trying to save some money by the time I returned to Rwanda. In hindsight, I wish I had done it, but I still enjoyed everything else the park had to offer. These photos above and below were taken during some of the hikes I did with local rangers.

There was good infrastructure throughout the park, including knowledgeable rangers, lodging, and small cafes and restaurants. I stayed at a small lodge surrounded by forest, which made a convenient base for exploring the park each day. Camping was also available, although I was surprised by how expensive it was compared with what I was used to elsewhere in Africa. The photo above is from the breakfast area of my lodge. I had the entire place to myself that morning!

While I didn’t do the chimpanzee tracking, I did take advantage of several hiking trails throughout the park. The trails I explored required a ranger, which added to the cost, but having someone familiar with the forest was also useful for learning more about the area. None of the trails I did were particularly steep or difficult, making them relaxing walks through some beautiful scenery. Above and below are a few shots from the trails.

Being in the tropical highlands of Africa, Nyungwe is filled with an incredible variety of plant life. Thick vegetation covered much of the forest floor, including these enormous ferns I came across along one of the trails.

The diversity of trees was just as impressive. In some parts of the forest the foliage would open up enough to reveal just how tall the trees were, while elsewhere the vegetation was so thick that it completely surrounded the trail. Below is some of the colorful tree bark I came across. I believe the ranger told me the species at the time, but unfortunately I can’t remember what it was!

I didn’t see any large wildlife while hiking in Nyungwe, but one of the most interesting things I came across was this seemingly endless stream of army ants leaving their nest. I stayed here for quite a while watching them, and even after I finished recording the video below, the stream of ants showed no sign of ending. Army ants can overwhelm surprisingly large animals if they’re injured or unable to escape, so I was happy to admire this colony from a safe distance.

There were plenty of smaller creatures to find as well. Most were the types of insects you’d expect while hiking through a tropical forest, although this giant grasshopper definitely stood out. I also came across a large colony of fruit bats. I’ve always been fascinated by bats, so seeing so many of them gathered together was another memorable wildlife encounter.

The highlight of my visit to Nyungwe was the park’s famous Canopy Walk. The suspended walkway rises as high as 165 feet (50 meters) above the forest floor, giving you a completely different perspective of the rainforest. From up here you can look across the treetops and spot birds that would be difficult or impossible to see from the trails below.

I’m not sure of the species of most of the birds I photographed here, but the colorful ones were definitely my favorites. With the canopy opening up around the walkway, it was much easier to watch birds moving between the treetops than it had been from the forest floor.

I saw several different species during my time on the Canopy Walk. Since I was accompanied by a ranger, I initially felt a little guilty about staying up there too long even though they told me to take as much time as I wanted. After about an hour I finally headed back, but I easily could have spent several more hours up there enjoying the scenery and waiting to see what other wildlife appeared. It was easily one of my favorite experiences in Rwanda.