What a visitor's money does in Rwanda: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.
Rwandan Franc (RWF) · 1 EUR = 1,660 RWF · 1 USD = 1,475 RWF
The permit is the budget: $1,500 per person for a foreign visitor, for one trek and one hour with the gorillas, booked through Visit Rwanda or an operator. Eight people per family per day, so permits are finite and the dry-season dates go first — book before anything else in the trip. Lodges here are priced in dollars and run from simple guesthouses in Musanze to some of the most expensive rooms in Africa at Kinigi. Bring dollars for porters and guide tips.
Avoid: expecting a machine at Kinigi
Use: Bank of Kigali, Equity, I&M — in Musanze or Kigali
Porter fees and tips for the rangers and trackers are cash; dollars are welcome.
Brochettes — goat on a skewer with grilled plantain and pili-pili — are what a Kigali evening is built around, with a Primus or a Mützig. The lunch buffet, a plate piled from beans, isombe (cassava leaves), plantain and rice for a fixed price, is how the city eats at midday. The coffee is grown here and is very good. Tap water is not for drinking.
Isambaza, the tiny lake sardines fried whole and eaten by the handful, are what to order on the shore, with a brochette of goat and grilled plantain. Tilapia from the lake is everywhere. The coffee is grown on the hills above the lake, and some of the washing stations will show you how.
Lodge food, mostly, and in the simpler places it is home cooking: beans, potatoes from the volcanic soil, which are famously good, and tilapia from the lakes. In Musanze, brochettes and grilled potatoes are the evening meal, and isombe, pounded cassava leaves, comes with most lunches.
The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.
Volcanoes National ParkRwandaOne hour with a family of mountain gorillas, on the slopes of five volcanoes
KigaliRwandaA capital spread over a thousand hills, swept clean on the last Saturday of the month
Lake KivuRwandaA deep, cool lake under the volcanoes, where the fishermen sing as they row out at dusk