Introduction
While the mountain gorillas of Volcanoes National Park are Rwanda's best-known attraction, the equally stunning Nyungwe National Park is also well worth incorporating into your itinerary. This dense tropical rainforest is one of the oldest and largest protected montane rainforests in Africa.
It's a biodiversity hotspot that's home to 280 birds, 120 butterflies and 200 varieties of orchid. Birds include plentiful forest hornbills, the red-throated alethe, great blue turaco and the paradise monarch. Thirteen hiking trails criss-cross the park - some easy, others more strenuous - making trekking a good way to see the wildlife. A canopy walk – the only one of its kind in East Africa – offers another excellent viewpoint of the tropical rainforest canopy below.
But this primal tangle of trees in the southwest corner of Rwanda is best known for its primates. Here can be seen a quarter of Africa's primate species. Africa's greatest concentration of chimpanzees is a major draw, alongside Ruwenzori colobus, L'Hoest's monkeys and several others.
