Nyungwe Forest

Chimpanzee tracking, and where it happens

Nyungwe sells chimpanzee tracking in two places and they are not equivalent. Cyamudongo is a small, separate block of forest about two hours west of the main Uwinka reception, near Rusizi, and it holds a smaller community in a smaller area, which is why the success rate there is the higher of the two. The main forest community, tracked from Uwinka or Gisakura, ranges over far more ground and is genuinely harder work.

Either way you leave at around 05:00 to be under the nesting trees when the chimpanzees wake and start calling. The walking is steep and the ground is wet more often than not. Be clear with yourself before booking: Nyungwe does not deliver the sighting rate that Kibale in Uganda does, and if seeing chimpanzees is the single point of the trip then Kibale is the better answer. What Nyungwe gives you instead is a much better forest.

The canopy walk

The walkway sits on the Igishigishigi trail from Uwinka. It runs roughly 160 metres across a ravine on suspended steel, high enough above the valley floor that the whole structure moves under you, and it puts you at the level of the crowns where the turacos and hornbills actually are. Departures run in the early morning, late morning and afternoon, the round trip takes about two hours including the trail down and back, and there is a minimum age that the guides do enforce. Take the first slot if you can, because cloud comes up the valley later in the day and takes the view with it.

Fees, and who sets them

Everything here is priced by the Rwanda Development Board and every figure below is indicative. Chimpanzee tracking runs at around 100 US dollars per person for a foreign non-resident. The canopy walk is roughly 60 US dollars. The other guided trails, including the colobus trek, generally sit somewhere in the 40 to 90 US dollar band depending on which trail and how long it takes. A guide is included in the trail fee and is not optional, which is no hardship, because the good ones here are very good and this is not a forest to be walking alone in.

Thirteen primates, and the colobus troops

The Angolan colobus at Gisakura move in troops that can run to several hundred animals, which is unusual for an arboreal monkey anywhere, and they are the most reliable primate sighting in the park. Beyond them the list runs through L’Hoest’s monkey, grey-cheeked mangabey, Dent’s mona monkey, red-tailed monkey, silver monkey, olive baboon, vervet and the rarely seen owl-faced monkey, which lives at the higher altitudes and which almost nobody gets.

Birders come for the Albertine Rift endemics, of which Nyungwe holds somewhere around twenty-nine, and several of them are easiest along the main road through the forest rather than on a trail. Red-collared mountain babbler, Rwenzori turaco and Grauer’s warbler are the ones people ask about by name.

Trails, the marsh and the Nile claim

The trail network runs to well over a hundred kilometres and most visitors see the first kilometre of it. Kamiranzovu is the big high-altitude marsh and is best in the early morning for the marsh birds and the mist. The Isumo waterfall trail drops steeply through tea estate and forest to the fall and then makes you climb back out, which is three hours well spent. Bigugu, at around 2,950 metres, is the highest point in the park and gives a view down towards Lake Kivu on a rare clear day.

The Rukarara headwater on the eastern side of the forest was identified by a 2006 expedition as the most distant source of the Nile. The claim is contested and the park signs repeat it cheerfully. Nyungwe was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2023, and the tea estates at Gisakura run right up to the forest edge, which makes the boundary here one of the sharpest lines you will see anywhere in East Africa.