Best Time To Visit The Volcanoes : The volcanoes are found in the northwest of rwanda with 160 square kilometers and is a home to the endangered mountain gorillas as well as its vegetation such as the montane ecosystem, the ever green bamboo forest and the open grassland. The volcanoes national park was named after a series of dormant volcanoes that make up the Virunga mountains with the highest being the bisoke with its crater lake, sabinyo, gahinga and muhabura. With such attractions, the volcanoes can’t be missed while on a Rwanda safari.
While on a gorilla trekking safari, gorillas will show up either during the wet season or dry season it doesn’t matter because the gorillas will definitely show up and the tourists will have an amazing hour to spend with them. Even when most people tend to have their safari in the dry seasons but even the wet seasons are possible to have an amazing safari in the volcanoes national park.
The volcanoes national park can be visited all throughout the year but the best time to have a safari is in the dry months of June and September. This is so because the temperatures are between 25 degrees Celsius and 27 degrees Celsius during the day and during the night the temperatures are 13.5 degrees Celsius and 15 degrees Celsius. Tourists are even told to carry some warm clothing due to the cool weather in the mountains in the evenings as well as early mornings.
The dry months are the most favorable times for a Rwanda safari because the trails are not muddy and can be easily accessible. The rains within the national park makes the trails muddy and thus it would be best to have the safari in the dry months. But that doesn’t mean that there no rains within the season. Since the national parks are all in the rain forests so rains are expected to pour any day within the year.
The dry months in the volcanoes national park are June to mid-September as well as December to February. But these have high demands of gorilla permits and the accommodations are high in the visiting times because prices will be higher in the dry seasons so tourists are advised to book earlier to avoid disappointments.
Besides mountain gorilla trekking, there are other amazing activities that tourists can engage into such as golden monkey trekking, a hike in the Virunga volcanoes or have a visit in the buhanga eco park, a visit to the twin lakes of burera and ruhondo or lake kivu which is known to be one of the world’s longest lakes. Hiking in the dry season as well as game viewing become easy since most animals converge at the water sources and it makes it easy to view the animals.
The wet season are months of March to May and October to November in Rwanda. Though it being a rainy season doesn’t mean that rain will rain throughout the entire season. Meaning incase a tourist has a 3-day safari, the forest may not receive rain the entire safari or it may rain for few hours and it stops. This implies that the tourist will have all activities as planned without any disturbance.
However, for the birding activity, this can be the best time for the birding safari in the volcanoes national park because most of the plants are flourishing and attractive to the birds. Photography during this period would be amazing because the entire vegetation is green.
During the wet season, there’s no congestion in the national park and accommodation services tend to be cheap. Therefore, the tourists receive a lot of attention from various service providers.
In conclusion, the best time to visit the volcanoes national park is the dry season but however even the wet season is favorable for all activities to take place. So the tourists can choose which season is best for them to have their Rwanda safari.
