Akagera National Park

Akagera National Park was named for the Kagera River, which flows along its eastern boundary before feeding Lake Ihema and a chain of smaller lakes that stitch the park's eastern reaches into a complex freshwater system of papyrus swamps, lagoon channels and floodplains. The park covers 1,122 square kilometres of eastern Rwanda, making it roughly the same size as Singapore, and was founded in 1934 during the colonial period when large swathes of East Africa were being demarcated for wildlife preservation. Unlike the forested mountains of Rwanda's west, Akagera is primarily savanna — rolling grasslands dotted with acacia trees, waterholes where elephants and buffalo come to drink in the early morning and late afternoon, when the light is golden and the heat is beginning to break.

For most of its history Akagera was a difficult park to visit. After the 1994 genocide, political instability and the resettlement of displaced people onto land that had been park boundary caused the park's wildlife to crash sharply. Lions were eliminated through poisoning by retaliating farmers, black rhinos were wiped out entirely, and the elephant population was halved. A major restoration effort beginning in 2010 brought in lions and black rhinos from South Africa, and the park was re-opened to tourists in 2017 with a new management consortium that includes African Parks and the Rwandan Development Board. Today the Big Five — lion, leopard, buffalo, elephant and rhinoceros — are all present in Akagera, and the park is considered one of the most successful rewilding stories in Africa.

Game drives across the savanna plains, particularly in the early morning when the grass is still heavy with dew, offer sightings of giraffes, zebras, topis, eland and the elusive sitatunga antelope in the papyrus swamps. The wetland section of Akagera, centred on Lake Ihema, is one of the most important bird habitats in Rwanda. The lake and its surrounding papyrus beds support populations of the rare papyrus gonolek, the shy and striking shoebill stork, and large congregations of migratory waterfowl. Boat trips on Lake Ihema offer the best chance of seeing the shoebill, a bird so prehistoric in appearance that it seems almost implausibly alive, standing motionless in the papyrus until it strikes a fish with surgical speed. The contrast between the open savanna game drive and the enclosed world of the papyrus wetlands makes Akagera a park of two distinct personalities, each requiring a different kind of attention from the visitor.

One of Africa's most compelling rewilding success stories: the Big Five restored after near-total collapse following the 1994 genocide.

The papyrus wetland boat trip on Lake Ihema offers some of the best shoebill stork sightings in Africa.

Compared to Kenyan and Tanzanian parks, Akagera is quiet, uncrowded and relatively inexpensive to visit.