What we spent: Rwanda
I thought about titling this post “Revenge of the Miscellaneous Category”. Whereas in previous months, “miscellaneous” has been a throw-away, merely a way to account for our regular ibuprofen purchases, our time in Rwanda really gave this category its time to shine. Comprising infectious disease prevention (accomplished before we arrived), Rwandan tourist visas and oh-so-many required Covid tests, miscellany dwarfed everything else, even the high cost of activities in Rwanda’s national parks. Fortunately for you, gentle reader, should you plan a trip to Rwanda in the future, this category might be closer to zero. Get your yellow fever vaccines at home and avoid traveling during a global pandemic and you’re mostly there.
20 days in Rwanda
In addition to national park fees, which we’ve mentioned several times before, car rental in Rwanda is also relatively expensive for the simple reason that our usual strategy of hiring the cheapest, smallest car on the road (see: Turkish road trip in a Renault Clio) doesn’t apply in Rwanda. Nothing but an SUV stands a prayer against Rwandan roads. You could choose to get around by bus and moto-taxi and I think if we were traveling without our children, we probably would have done just that. But under the circumstances, a longer term SUV rental was very nice to have indeed.
Tented lodge overlooking Lake Kivu in Gisenye
Lots of other categories can be inexpensive in Rwanda; food for example was fresh, delicious and cheap (it was also somewhat elusive and once found, almost unbelievably slow to arrive, but that’s another story). Local beer was cheap; (boxed) wine was relatively expensive.
Very expensive campsite in Akagera National Park
Lodging, as in other places, covered a wide range of options from the One&Only in Nyungwe (Brian mentioned elsewhere this place costs thousands of dollars per night; we asked our Airbnb host the following week, “Who stays there?” “Oh,” he said, “You know. Leonardo DiCaprio. Saudi princes”) to sub-$20 per night campsites. Camping at eco lodges, which included use of the bathrooms and (sometimes warm) showers and often breakfast as well, generally cost $30-50 per night. One exception was camping in Akagera National Park, which ran us a cool $90 for the night. Tented eco lodges and unfancy hotels cost more like $60-100. Overall we kept lodging costs lower by bringing our tents along and sleeping in them eight of our 19 nights in Rwanda. Needless to say, Brian feels vindicated.
Colony of Speke’s weavers near Akagera
As in prior months, I’ve left airfare off the table above. Our flights from Istanbul to Kigali were covered by points and we spent $1135 on tickets from Kigali to Cape Town.
