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Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda

Wilderness Bisate Reserve

Price per night from$6,890.00

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (inclusive of taxes and fees) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (USD6,890.00), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Wilderness Bisate Reserve Photos

Style

Ape-x of sustainability

Setting

Gorilla-roamed rainforest

Explore

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You’ll feel more king than kong at intimate Wilderness Bisate Reserve, a volcano-framed safari stay with enviable access to the region’s mountain gorillas. Luxury is experienced in many forms: greenery-backdropped hot tubs, face-to-face gorilla encounters, and ultra-fresh seasonal dining. This four-villa camp has a strong sense of community, one you’ll quickly feel a part of on nature walks, village visits and tree-planting sessions. Drink it all in from the scenery-surveying bar or by a cockles-warming fireplace.

 

Standard prices listed on Mr & Mrs Smith are per night for two adults sharing. 

Smith Extra

Get this when you book through us:

A locally crafted souvenir gift (worth around $50)

Facilities

Photos Wilderness Bisate Reserve facilities

Need to know

Rooms

Four villas.

Check–Out

10am, and check-in is at 2pm. Both are flexible, on request and subject to availability.

More details

Rates include all meals, drinks (apart from some premium alcohol) and some excursions. Extras to pay for include travel between camps, specialist excursions (Gorilla Permits are around $1,500) and spa treatments.

Also

Unfortunately this remote camp is not suitable for guests with limited mobility.

At the hotel

Day lounge, wine cellar, laundry service and WiFi in main lodge and villas. In villas: air-conditioning, coffee- and tea-making kit, minibar, free bottled water, yoga mats and weights, hairdryer and Healing Earth bath products.

Our favourite rooms

Like the dormant volcanoes that mark your national park locale, you too will rest soundlessly in your one-bedroom villa at Wilderness Bisate Reserve. The standalone residences not only nod to the landscape, they respect it with their thatch and timber construction, and artisan textiles and artwork. You’ll find a wood-fired hot tub on your foliage-framed terrace and an egg-shaped bath tub indoors, both of which are primed for steamy post-trek soaks.

Poolside

Hit your terrace’s hot tub for post-hike unwinding with the rainforest canopy as your screensaver. It takes a couple of hours for the water to heat up, so ask staff in advance to light it for you in time for your return to base.

Spa

At Bisate Reserve, a resident spa therapist is on hand to offer massage and facial treatments in your suite at additional cost.

Packing tips

A craving for natural immersion and screen-free entertainment — Wilderness Bisate Reserve readily supplies both.

Children

Children over six are welcome, but note that gorilla treks are for over-15s only (with notice, a dedicated staff member can mind younger children while you trek). Two suites can connect via an external passage to create a two-bedroom family villa.

Sustainability efforts

Wilderness takes a threefold approach to sustainability, aiming to protect (with sensitive management between people and wildlife), empower (by investing in the local community) and educate (supporting pathways out of poverty). In total, its camps help to protect six million acres of land, highlighting conservation and bringing tourism to rural areas across the African continent. Each camp treads lightly following a set of strict standards that apply to the construction and operation of each stay. Standards cover water and energy consumption; monitoring of waste and recycling, and supply chain management. Camps are audited twice yearly and must comply with at least 85 per cent of the requirements. Any shortfalls are targeted to be addressed before the next audit. Wilderness Bisate Reserve is 100 per cent solar powered.

Food and Drink

Photos Wilderness Bisate Reserve food and drink

Top Table

Stick to the back-to-nature theme and pick a table on the jungle-bordering terrace.

Dress Code

Jungle greens, khakis and browns tend to be your day-to-night colour palette, but you’ll want to dust off the day in the camp’s mud room, first.

Hotel restaurant

There’s nothing as formal in camp as a restaurant in the traditional sense: meals are tailored to fit with the day’s scheduled activities, but evenings are often a chance to come together with other guests and staff over drinks before sitting down to an à-la-carte menu that’s guided by regional ingredients and seasonal crops, but will always provide a small choice of dishes for each course. If you’re up and out early, expect a basic breakfast at camp, bolstered by drinks and snacks on the trail, before returning to an early lunch or brunch. Similarly, guided afternoon outings are always accompanied with on-location drinks and/or nibbles. 

Hotel bar

The lounge’s vaulted ceilings and exposed wooden beams create an arching effect that mirrors the volcanic peaks that contour the rainforest’s horizon. An emerald-hued bar and leaf-like glass chandelier draw parallels to the outdoors, but a roaring fireplace, fluffy throws and artisan furnishings bring a cosy warmth to the space. Starry night caps and alfresco sundowners may well become part of your daily routine at Wilderness Bisate Reserve, as well as fireside apéritifs in the Bisate Kwanda Day Lounge. 

Last orders

There are no set dining hours: embrace the fact that food and drink will be seamlessly integrated into your day just when you want it.

Room service

A minibar in your suite is stocked with soft drinks and low-alcohol options. When hunger strikes, head over to the lodge, where staff will be happy to help.

Location

Photos Wilderness Bisate Reserve location
Address
Wilderness Bisate Reserve
Volcanoes National Park
Ruhengeri
Rwanda

Wilderness Bisate Reserve is an intimate safari stay in the heart of Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, a storied landscape with mountain gorillas, verdant peaks and abundant birdlife.

Planes

Fly into Kigali International Airport, which is over three hours’ drive from the camp. Wilderness can arrange helicopter transfers for an extra charge: it’s half an hour by air to Bisate helipad, which is a five-minute drive to the camp, or to Musanze airstrip, a 25-minute drive away.

Automobiles

You’ll want to put someone else in the driving seat and let your Wilderness hosts take care of transfers, which are speedier by air. Should you choose to self-drive, you'll find free parking at the camp.

Other

Once you’ve booked your safari stays, the Wilderness team will be in touch to arrange travel between camps — for Rwanda, this usually involves scheduled or private helicopter transfers.

Worth getting out of bed for

Wilderness Bisate Reserve has many draws, but its most illustrious is its proximity to the region’s mountain gorillas. On gorilla trekking excursions, guides will lead you on patience-biding tramps through Volcanoes National Park’s dense rainforest to seek out these endangered creatures. You could also hike to spy golden monkeys, visit Dian Fossey Grave, an activist who dedicated her life to Rwanda’s gorillas, or up misty Mount Bisoke with its crater-lake views. Birdwatching comes naturally on these jungle trails, and you can learn more about the camp’s ethos by planting a shrub at their tree nursery, visiting its community beehive project or touring its organic kitchen garden.

Safari adventures with Wilderness in Rwanda have the geographical range to deliver incredible variety in a shorter time frame. Start here in the north with Volcanoes National Park, which is home to the mountain gorillas of Virungas, this intimate camp, Wilderness Bisate Reserve, and its Smith stablemate Wilderness Bisate. Next, for opportunities to track the Big Five, head by helicopter (or road) to Wilderness Magashi Peninsula — a savannah stay in Akagera National Park.

Local restaurants

All meals and snacks are included with your stay — whether back at the lodge for dinner or out in the bush for a mid-drive pitstop.

Reviews

Photos Wilderness Bisate Reserve reviews

Anonymous review

By Mr & Mrs Smith

Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this luxe safari hotel in Rwanda and unpacked their hiking boots and handmade crafts, a full account of their in-the-jungle break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Wilderness Bisate Reserve in Volcanoes National Park…

At Wilderness Bisate Reserve, a romance-inspiring retreat in Rwanda’s gorilla-patrolled rainforest, you might draw on Tarzan and/or Jane as your holiday alter egos. You’ll want to don something more practical than a loincloth on your thrill-seeking adventures (how you dress when you’re in your private villa is up to you) but like your fictional muses, you too will (figuratively) swing through the jungle.

Gorilla treks to seek out real-life Terk and Kala will take you through wildlife-packed terrain, with possible sightings of golden monkeys, coarse chameleons and paradise flycatchers. There’s also a sense of being among the treetops from your terrace-set hot tub, which looks out to the verdant Volcanoes National Park.

When you’ve had enough adventuring for one day, brush off in the camp’s dedicated mud room before settling into some serious downtime. We think even Tarzan would consider ditching his life in the wild for Wilderness’ in-villa massages, fireside nature documentaries and convivial dinners of fresh local produce...

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Price per night from $6,890.00

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