Akagera National park in Rwanda
Akagera national park is most known for her unrivaled game drive safaris in Rwanda. The park is always on top of the list of Rwanda safaris for travelers who love game viewing, boat cruises, birding, and fishing. Located in Northeastern Rwanda at the border with Tanzania, the park protects both animals and vegetation in three eco-regions; Savannah, montane and swamp. It is named after the Akagera River that flows along its Eastern boundary while pouring its waters into several Lakes including Lake Ihema, which is the largest. The natural beauty of the park is seen as linking papyrus swamps that cover over a third of the park hence making it the largest protected wetland in East and Central Africa surrounds a complex system of lakes.
Just like its host country, Akagera national park is a survivor of the catastrophic genocide that didn’t only aim at eliminating one human race but also went as far as compromising with wildlife in this gazetted area. The park is a success story in making, having escaped extinction of its wildlife at the hand s of desperate poachers and encroachers during the doomed days of the genocide. The park has over 8,000 large mammals including big game drivers favorites of lion, elephant, buffalo, leopard, and rhino. Akagera’s birding safari leads to her excess of 520 bird species including the Rift Valley endemics. Other varieties of mammals in the park include eland, hippopotamus, giraffe, roan, warthog, zebra, waterbuck, impala, topi among others.
The growing reputation of Akagera’s wildlife story is driven home by her ever-increasing number of visitors that growing from 15,000 in 2010 to 37,000 in 2017. It is after discovering the success story of Akagera and other national parks of Rwanda like Nyungwe and Volcanoes that many travelers are starting to tune into new thinking of Rwanda having known the country majorly by her catastrophic events of the genocide.
Experience in Akagera National Park
As you drive along the roads in the park, you may soon come across a family of necking giraffes positioning themselves in the middle of one of the dirt roads while rubbing their long necks together. The best thing to do at that moment is to sit back, relax and enjoy the show. Unlike the competition and congestion to view and photograph the incredible animal migration in Serengeti National Park and Maasai Mara National Reserve in Tanzania and Kenya respectively, in Akagera you enjoy marvelous views of the necking giraffes as well other game and birds without the sighting of another tourist.
Game Viewing in Akagera National Park
The game drive is the star activity in Akagera and it is a five to seven-hour experience taking you through one of the most gorgeous East African landscapes with open plains, scraggy highlands and swampy waters of this large wetland area. While driving through Akagera your target should be to look out for the park’s most sought treasure, the “big five” it was not until recently in 2017 completed the installation of this traveler’s favorite list. It is a complete package with lions, leopards, Cape buffalo, elephants and rhinoceros. Sighting Akagera’s “big five” is now the crowning achievement of almost all Rwanda safaris. Rwanda’s “big five” list was not full till 2015 when lions were introduced in Akagera followed by the introduction of 18 critically endangered eastern black rhinos in 2017 from South Africa.
Conservation
The park’s management is working hard to strengthen conservation in the park through implementing a number of measures that include an electric fence monitored by a canine unit and 80 rangers put up around the park to control poachers. Rangers are playing a vital role in integrating the local community into tourism by building back trust with them. Unlike in the past where members could kill every animal those compromises with their livestock and crops, today they have learned to call the park when such cases occur.
Lodging in Akagera National Park
The park has budget accommodation in Akagera Game Lodge while those looking for better standards can consider Ruzizi Tented Lodge. The lodge faces the beautiful wares of lake Ihema with startling cracking sound of hippos smashing their tusks together in the early morning tussles.
Camping in Akagera National Park
The Karenge Bush Camp at the North end of the park allows visitors to get closer to the park’s natural surroundings. The camp has six separate groups of glamping-style tents each housing a maximum of 12 guests. The site overlooks a valley that harbors groups of grazing antelopes and zebras while sometimes leopards drop by to visit at night when guests gather in camp chairs around a fire.
With the presence of the “big five”, incredible night drive and the bush camp, perhaps all these may not be the major factors taking travelers to Akagera, but one other thing, proximity. Akagera national park is just two and-a-hour drive from the capital Kigali. Private travelers may not need to hire a driver with a 4WD or buy propeller ticket and no much need to book a hotel room for long day trip travelers.
