The war-weary hippo trotted into the acacia tree, its feet surprisingly light. It was not quite the dancer from Fantasia, but even with layers of scar tissue covering the sides of its body, this creature embodied grace and tenacity in the undergrowth.
Within 24 hours of our stay in Rwanda’s Akagera National Park, a collection of savannas, swamps, and lakes about 100 miles east of the capital, Kigali, my family and I had become accustomed to hippos. Many are scattered across the surface of Lake Ruwaya Kazinga, which is home to Wilderness Magahi, an eight-suite solar-powered tent camp. Although I’m snug in my big bed with hot water bottles at night, their purring keeps me awake – an insomniac’s dream.
But seeing this lone hippo moving across land gives us a sense of the animal’s size and speed. “When hippos fight, their teeth are like spears,” explained Herman Nkusi, our soft-spoken Rwandan guide. Later, he drove out to hunt and found two front teeth in a wooded area. My son Bobby lifted a tooth up and down like a barbell, and the tooth was almost as long as his arm.
After the 1994 genocide – in which an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed in 100 days – Akagera was significantly reduced in size as land was redistributed. Poaching is not under control, which means many native wildlife have also disappeared. In 2010, the Rwanda Development Board and African Parks, a conservation nonprofit, joined forces to restore the reserve, which now covers 433 square miles. Lions were reintroduced in 2015, followed by rhinos in 2017. The Great Five antelope is now seen in Akagera, Kruger National Park in South Africa, and Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania. One evening, at sunset, we saw a mother rhino and her six-month-old calf, their precious horns bobbing up and down, eating grass for dinner. There’s no other traffic around us.
In this context, Akagera’s development, like Rwanda’s tourism industry, has been slow, deliberate, and dramatic. Wilderness Magashi opened in May 2019; Magashi Peninsula is a four-suite supporting property under development. Although we didn’t see any other children during our stay, the camp felt very convenient for families, with a small pool and a staff to look after the children. Nkusi’s wife was expecting their first child. Every afternoon, he would give up his passenger seat and give a walkie-talkie to Bobby – the quickest way to capture the heart of an 8-year-old boy.
Multi-generational travel, which has exploded in reliable safari destinations such as Kenya and South Africa, is still in its infancy in Rwanda. This is in part because the minimum age for gorilla trekking in Volcanoes National Park is 15. But we’ve found that going a little deeper than a destination’s most famous activities leads to extraordinary experiences for different ages.
“We have raised three biological children and three adopted children here, and in addition to the gorillas, we have found many family-friendly activities,” says Alissa Ruxin. She and her husband, Josh, own the Retreat by Heaven, a luxury 20-room hotel in the central Kigali district of Kiyovu. It was a sacred and welcoming place to refresh Bobby after a long flight: Bobby was drawn to the shaded pool and the Gorilla chess board in the open-air reception area – an invitation if ever there was one.
Nu Skin suggests cycling in the new Nyandungu Urban Wetland Ecotourism Park or zipping through the Fazenda Sengha recreation center in the Kigali Mountains. But our adventures took an even bigger turn. Bobby loves to dress up, and he bought a custom-sized beaded bracelet at Moshions, a gender-neutral boutique in Kigali. The boutique is owned by the energetic, ultra-stylish Moses Turahirwa, who runs upstairs to his studio to try it on. Moshions is one of several emerging brands, including Sarah Legrand’s brass jewelry brand K’t Sobe and Asantii, a contemporary women’s label founded by Maryse Mbonyumutwa, whose shops and studios are open to visitors, making fashion accessible and welcoming here.
Through her larger enterprise, Pink Mango, Mbonyumutwa employs around 1,000 people (80% of whom are women) to produce clothing for Asantii and other global brands (white label). One morning, she took us on a tour of her two hangar-like factories in Kigali’s “Special Economic Zone,” an industrial area 30 minutes from the city center. “We have an embroidery training department here, and then we also work with women’s cooperatives in rural areas,” she said as an employee nearby finished a white Asantii shirt.
At one factory, we visited a daycare and kindergarten run by Pink Ubuntu (the social impact arm of Pink Mango), which opened in 2021 to support the children of female employees. Bobby told Mboyoumtwa about the similarities between the school and his old one (little bed for naps, ABC written on the wall). As we left, I noticed several large letters written above the cabinet. They say, “Amazing things happen when you try.”
“Are we sure this is a good idea?”
My husband, Rob, wondered why Bobby was at the front of the pack on the Canopy Walkway. The Canopy Trail is a slightly swaying suspension bridge over 230-foot treetops in Nyungwe National Park. Children as young as six can walk through the 525-foot-long structure, a significant park attraction, along with some 310 bird species, hiking trails, waterfalls, and chimpanzee Tours. In September 2023, Nyungwe, a 252,000-acre site in the southwestern corner of Rwanda, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the country’s first.
After 45 minutes down the Igishigishigi trail – a trail that all travelers must follow, accompanied to the sidewalk and back – Bobby first crossed the bridge. Honestly, I don’t want to go first either. “Small steps! I called him as we all transitioned, praying that there would be no afternoon showers, as sometimes happens during the rainy season in November.
Sweat trickled down from my hands like streams. “We did it! I shouted as I grabbed Rob and Bobby’s hands on the other side. Unlike mine, theirs is as cool as a cucumber.
After a rush of adrenaline, we collapsed in the earthy luxury suite at One&Only Nyungwe House. Unique Villa Newey has 22 rooms comprising several wooden villas; the main house has soaring ceilings and a large fireplace and sits in the middle of a heart-stopping tea plantation. Our time there was brief but enjoyable: Rob and I got up at 4:30 am to go on a five-hour chimpanzee hike (tiring and not for kids) while Bobby took cooking and painting lessons in the lobby and looked for inspiration in the fields outside. Later, we met with women from the Nyungwe Cultural Village Cooperative, who picked tea for a living. They taught us how to sort the thick, healthy green leaves into large baskets strapped to our backs. When nature is at your fingertips, kids’ clubs are superfluous.
“You have to mimic the sounds you hear,” explains Kadiala Kinay, customer service manager at the Dean Fossey Gorilla Foundation. We’re visiting the fund’s state-of-the-art Ellen DeGeneres campus, which opened in 2022 on the outskirts of Volcanoes National Park, a 62-square-mile stretch of tropical rainforest in northwest Rwanda. The contemporary campus, designed with local volcanic stone, is part of a research and education center, an interactive museum, and an excellent place for kids to participate in conservation.
Bobby is watching the “Gorilla Chat” exhibit, where you can learn how these animals communicate. After listening to recordings of them laughing, crying, singing, and beating their chests, we took turns imitating them, breaking our inhibitions and trying to imitate them. We wandered into a recreated Dian Fossey cabin with some of the legendary primatologist’s personal belongings on display and a model of a mountain gorilla skeleton next to a human skeleton. King ‘ai even took us to a separate lab, where about 1,000 wild mountain gorillas are still being studied, and showed us brown paper bags filled with frozen feces that contained a lot of biological information, including whether the animals were stressed.
After studying on campus for a few hours, telling Bobby he couldn’t see a gorilla up close wasn’t easy. Dickett was one of Diane Fossey’s favorite characters, and his portrait left a deep impression. But I gently explained that there were plenty of other things for him to do at each of our hotels – archery and drum lessons at the One&Only Gorilla’s Nest, which also happens to have a spectacular infinity pool – as well as games, coloring, and endless croissants at Singita Kwitonda Lodge, Both hotels are within about 15 minutes of the park. It’s time for Dad and me to be alone.
Gorilla hiking can be an all-day affair. On the morning of the hike, each visitor is assigned to a family group and goes where they want to go. I was unprepared for some of the dangers of hiking: mud, fire ants, and stinging nettles. But when we arrived at the Hirwa group—a family of 17 with a rare pair of rowdy male twins—my adrenaline started pumping. According to park rules, we only have one hour to stay with them. It’s time to go.
One of the twins reached into the ground, pulled out a handful of ants, and licked his fingers clean. Two cubs circle a bamboo tree, supervised by a Silverback bear. I noticed a more minor, slower-moving gorilla hiding from the rain in the bushes. Its rheumatic eyes betrayed a world-weariness that the younger, more agile animals didn’t seem to have. She’s Kibyeyi, at 49, one of the oldest female gorillas in the park. I must have told Bobby all about her when I got back.
