The Vision Trip included a trip to Akagera National Park. John shares the experience.

Rwanda’s best known attraction is the mountain gorillas in Volcanoes National Park in the northwest part of the country straddling the Congolese and Ugandan borders. Less well known, certainly to us, is that Rwanda has one of the oldest national parks in Africa—Akagera National Park. While less famous than the larger game parks of Kenya and Tanzania, it was established in 1934 and runs along the eastern border with Tanzania, originally covering 10% of the country. Interestingly, the Agakera River for which the park is named, flows from Burundi along the eastern side of the park and is part of the headwaters of the Nile River. The comfortably rustic Akagera Game Lodge is situated on the eastern shores of beautiful Lake Ihema which dominates the southern end of the park.

The park was completely decimated and virtually abandoned during the devastating genocide in 1994. It was officially downsized by two thirds in 1997 to accommodate the majority of the two million Rwandan refugees returning to their native country with their 40,000 head of cattle.

The park has seen a resurgence since 2010 when it was put under the management of a private game company partnering with the Rwandan Government and has been nurtured back to a rich area of biodiversity and wildlife. Today the park boasts abundant wildlife including approximately 100 elephants, 2500 Cape Buffalo, 50 Leopards, 1800 Zebra, 80 Giraffe, 1600 Hippopotami, 11 species of antelope, 1000 Warthogs and an unknown number of Baboons, and over 500 bird species. Lions and rhinoceroses have been reintroduced into the park as well.

On our Sunday afternoon and Monday morning drive we were fortunate to see Cape Buffalo, Zebra, Baboons, Warthogs, many antelope and a majestic Giraffe. As we tried to make our way to the restaurant for breakfast this morning, a number of us were welcomed by a very bold and aggressive family of baboons.

Akagera National Park and Lodge was a wonderful and unexpected ending to our vision trip with Wellspring and the amazing group of people travelling together seeing the beauty and diversity of Rwanda over the last 10 days.