If an African safari is on your family’s bucket list, you’re likely considering a trip to Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya and Tanzania, Serengeti National Park or Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania. Or maybe Kruger National Park in South Africa — all worthy and popular destinations. But I’m here to make a case for expanding your idea of what your African adventure could be.
My family and I recently traveled with G Adventures on a small group trip to Uganda with a short stint in Rwanda. In addition to savannah wildlife like elephants, hippos, leopards, lions, and water buffalo, these two countries offer something more — mountain gorillas.
So, before you book your ticket to Africa, let’s explore the possibilities a little more deeply.
1. Trekking to see mountain gorillas
There are only three places in the world where mountain gorillas live — Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Due to ongoing civil unrest and the recent murders of three Virunga National Park rangers by armed militia, I would not recommend going to the DRC. While the U.S. State Department has a Level 3 (Reconsider Travel) travel advisory for Uganda, I think it’s unwarranted. We felt very safe traveling with our G Adventures guides in Uganda. And Rwanda, with its Level 1 (Exercise Normal Precautions) travel advisory, is considered one of the safest countries in Africa today.
(Note: Not to be confused with the DRC. The Republic of Congo, which is home to a smaller species called the western lowland gorillas. As is Angola, Cameroon, Central Africa Republic, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon.)
Gorilla trekking is not for the faint of heart. It can be a very physical undertaking; however, the payoff is magical. You’d be hard-pressed to have a more intimate experience with an animal in the wild. We stood 10 feet from a 400-pound Silverback gorilla and his family. One person in our group called it a “life-changing experience.” To learn more about gorilla trekking, read our companion article, “10 Things to Know about Gorilla Trekking in Africa.”
KidTripster Tip: Because of the physicality of this trip and the need to follow instructions precisely, the minimum age for gorilla trekking is 15 years old.
2. Hanging with chimpanzees
With gorilla trekking on the itinerary, I honestly hadn’t given much thought to the day listed as “Chimpanzee Trekking”. But our day at Kibale National Park in Uganda was just as memorable and exhilarating with a lot less effort! Humans share 98.8% of our DNA with chimps. And when you encounter them close up in the wild, the similarities are remarkable.
In addition to Kibale, chimp trekking is available at Murchison Falls National Park and Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda and Nyungwe National Park and Gishwati Forest in Rwanda. As a bonus, be on the lookout for other primates, like baboons, colobus monkeys, vervet monkeys, and bushbabies.
3. Wildlife spotting on safari
In addition to primates, Rwanda and Uganda have the full complement (or nearly full complement, depending on where you go) of safari wildlife. In Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park, we had our own “Lion King” moments with lions, leopards, elephants, hippos, water buffalo, warthogs, Ugandan kobs, waterbucks and a wild array of colorful birds. What we didn’t see were giraffes, rhinos (though they may be reintroduced in the next few years), and zebras. For those animals, you’ll need to head to Murchison Falls and Lake Mburo National Parks (Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary). In Rwanda, Akagera National Park is home to Africa’s Big Five: buffalos, elephants, leopards, lions, and rhinos, in addition to other wildlife.
While Queen Elizabeth National Park didn’t have the vast number of animals that I’ve experienced in the Serengeti, it also wasn’t overrun by hordes of safari vehicles filled with tourists, which can detract from the experience.
KidTripster Tip: If you’re looking to take excellent photos on a safari, it’s worth either buying or renting a long lens. For this trip, I rented a Sony FE 200-600mm/F5.6-6.3 G OSS from my local camera shop. While the lens added a lot of weight to my camera bag, it was worth hauling to Africa.
[ Related: 10 Things to Know about Gorilla Trekking in Africa ]
4. Interacting with the locals
One thing that my family and I have found in our travels is that folks who live in destinations that are well-loved by tourists often can be less welcoming than locals who live in places that receive fewer travelers. It’s understandable. That may explain why I found the Ugandans and Rwandans to be more friendly than my previous encounters in Tanzania. In Uganda especially, locals asked us to be ambassadors for their country — spreading the message that Uganda welcomes visitors, which it does.
On our tour with G Adventures, two Native Ugandan guides, Paul and Luke escorted us. Both were good-natured, easy to laugh, and extremely knowledgeable. As we traveled overland from Kampala to the three national parks and then on to Kigali in Rwanda, we peppered them with questions about what we were seeing along the way and in the process, got a very rich picture of life in today’s Uganda. Those images — women walking uphill while balancing unimaginable loads on their heads and babies on their backs, a man on a bicycle with two live goats and two live chickens headed to market, and the hundreds of uniformed children walking to school, smiling and waving to us — are imprinted in my memory.
KidTripster Tip: If you visit Rwanda, pay a visit to the Kigali Genocide Memorial. It’s a museum that explores the mass genocide that occurred in the country in 1994.
To my mind, every family should visit Africa at least once in their lives, if possible. If it’s only once, I think a trip to Uganda or Rwanda will provide your family with more memorable moments.
