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Our team provides trips to Rwanda for individuals and groups who want to experience the rich environmental and cultural diversity that Rwanda uniquely has to offer. We keep our groups between four and six people and customize your trip to emphasize your interests in order to create the perfect trip that you and your friends or family will both enjoy and never forget. 

First, let’s get a few things out of the way!  

Cleanliness: Rwanda is Disneyland clean, from the moment you land at the airport, to the drive to Musanze or Lake Kivu, and all the beautiful stops along the way. If you happen to visit on the last Saturday of the month, you can observe Umaganda, a monthly day when everyone, including the President, His Excellency Paul Kagame and his family, stop what they are doing and clean. This practice was started 22 years ago and largely accounts for why the country is so clean on a regular, daily basis.  After cleaning is complete, villages meet, plan, air grievances and share community time solving problems and planning for their immediate future.

Medical Concerns: there is an excellent out of country insurance package that each participant will receive as part of their trip. There are also several ex-pat American doctors all over the country and a great network of care should you need it. Your U.S. guide has deep ties in Rwanda and is available to you 24/7.

Drinking Water Safety: Bottled water is always everywhere and available to you not because the water in Rwanda is dirty, because the bacteria in our bodies are different from the bacteria there. And foreign bacteria can be uncomfortable, so we just don’t go there. 

A bit of Geography: The headwaters of the Nile are at the north end of Rwanda, on the Uganda border, where the Virunga National Park is located. This is where Diane Fossey did her “Gorillas in the Mist” work.  The viewable wildlife is fascinating and truly…wild. The volcanoes are a beautiful backdrop through which to visit other spectacular scenery – hiking to see the monkey colonies, spending a day on the shores of Lake Kivu, or visiting a cultural village that ex-gorilla hunters have established as a viable alternative to gorilla poaching.

A bit of History, some of it Pretty Serious: Rwanda experienced a Genocide in 1994.  Around a million people were killed and it was a full-on tragedy from every point of view.  How do you ever recover from that? They did, emerging as a model for non-traditional ways to handle the worst things you can imagine. At the beginning of the trip, a visit to the Genocide Memorial, the Reconciliation Village where victims and perpetrators are living together in harmony and a visit to the school that contains the children of the intermarriages from the Reconciliation Village help you to get acquainted with the political climate of Rwanda and get up to speed on the meaningful decisions that the country has made post genocide. 

Accommodations and food: Our accommodations are lovely and clean; in Musanze it is literally our teams’ home away from home. The food is delicious, and if you appreciate fresh food, with a fresh culinary touch, you will love the food in Rwanda.  From Heaven restaurant in Kigali to freshly prepared food at Paradise Café on Lake Kivu – there’s a reason the eating establishments are ‘other worldly’ named! 

About the weather: When you hear someone say, “Let’s go to Africa!”, you’re probably thinking “Wow! Get ready for hot weather with a side of dust!”  For many places in Africa, you would be right.  But not Rwanda. 

The whole country is 65°F to 78°F all year round. In Musanze, where we will spend much of our time the weather is very much like central California. The weather in Kigali is slightly warmer but hardly ever gets above 80°F.  Go ahead, look it up on your weather app…the location is Kigali and Prefecture de Ruhengeri. 

Is there anything we can do to make this meaningful, like help out? Funny you should ask! We include in the price of your trip the cost of some raw materials so that we can participate in improving the communities we visit.  These projects are simple: repainting the blackboards in a school or the whiteboards, painting a classroom or two, helping set up a volleyball court, or spending a couple of hours speaking to high school students in English. If you want to discuss it before we go, let’s hear it!  We are flexible! The memories that your children or grandchildren will take from this trip will influence their lives and change their sense of what a vacation adventure is, so we want it to include your ideas.

Here is the rough day-to-day itinerary:

Cost: USD $3,000 per person, tax deductible donation (USD $2,900 is eligible for exemption, consult your tax advisor for individual situations).  Price includes round trip airfare, visa fee (paid at the airport on arrival) all hotels, excursions, transportation, food, water and entry fees. 

Inquire about our add-ons to Cape Town South Africa or the Serengeti Ngorongoro caldera.