Bisate Lodge

Six thatched villas cling to the inside of an eroded volcanic cone at Bisate Lodge, on the edge of Volcanoes National Park in north-western Rwanda, and from their windows the slopes of Bisoke and Karisimbi rise across the valley. Wilderness Safaris opened the lodge in 2017, the year Rwanda raised the price of a gorilla permit to 1,500 US dollars and turned the park towards fewer, longer-staying visitors.

History

The park was created in 1925 as Albert National Park, the first national park in Africa, to protect the mountain gorillas of the Virunga volcanoes. Its best-known figure is Dian Fossey, the American primatologist who in 1967 set up the Karisoke Research Center in the saddle between Karisimbi and Bisoke, naming it after the two peaks. She published Gorillas in the Mist in 1983, was murdered at her camp in December 1985 and is buried there beside the gorillas she studied. Sigourney Weaver played her in the film of 1988.

Bisate itself was built on farmland that had lost most of its trees. Wilderness Safaris began replanting the hillside with indigenous species as building started, with seedlings raised in a nursery and the work done largely by people from Bisate and the surrounding villages. The aim is to return the cone to the kind of montane forest that once covered the foothills.

Wilderness Safaris was founded in Botswana in 1983 and runs camps across southern Africa. Bisate was its first lodge in Rwanda; Magashi, a camp in Akagera National Park in the east of the country, followed in 2019.

Architecture and design

The architect Nick Plewman took the form of the villas from the royal palace at Nyanza, the domed and thatched residence of the Rwandan kings, and gave each a rounded roof of thatch that rises from the slope like a nest. Interiors, by Caroline Choux, use volcanic stone, woven panels and imigongo, the geometric patterns traditionally made with cow dung in eastern Rwanda, with greens and natural tones drawn from the forest outside.

Rooms and suites

Each of the six villas has a bedroom and a sitting area under one roof, a wood-burning fireplace for the cold nights and a deck facing the volcanoes. The paths between them are steep, a reminder that the lodge stands at well over 2,000 metres. With so few villas it is one of the smallest luxury lodges in Volcanoes National Park.

Dining

The main building, also thatched, holds the dining room, bar and lounge, with a terrace over the valley and a fire lit in the evenings. Breakfast on trekking days is served early, since groups gather at Kinigi around seven, and packed lunches go up the mountain for the longer hikes.

Location

Gorilla treks start at the park headquarters at Kinigi, a short drive from the lodge, where rangers brief visitors and assign each group to one of the habituated gorilla families. Trekkers must be at least fifteen, and each family is visited by one group a day for an hour. The lodge also arranges golden monkey treks in the bamboo zone, the climb to the crater lake on the summit of Bisoke, at 3,711 metres, and the hike to Fossey's grave at Karisoke, which takes most of a day.

Musanze, once called Ruhengeri, is the nearest town. Kigali International Airport is about two and a half hours away by road, and helicopter transfers shorten the journey considerably.