Nyungwe Forest National Park

Overview

Nyungwe is a montane rainforest in Rwanda’s south-west that survived the last ice age, which is why it holds species found nowhere else in the region. Around 1,000 chimpanzees live here alongside twelve other primate species, including large troops of Angola colobus that can number several hundred. The canopy walkway — a suspension bridge 70 m above the forest floor — is the park’s signature and the reason many visitors come. Chimpanzee tracking starts before dawn and is genuinely uncertain: the animals move fast and high, and a sighting is never promised. It pairs naturally with Volcanoes rather than competing with it. Gorillas in the north, chimpanzees and forest birds in the south, and a drive between them that takes most of a day through terraced hills.