Wilderness Bisate Newsletter – December 2023

Wilderness’ Rwandan operation has gone from strength to strength, with our sister camps Sabyinyo and Magashi showcasing the variety of beauty that Rwanda has to offer. With exciting new offerings in the pipeline, and our existing properties now truly showing at their very best, we can be sure that this little nugget of African gold – that is largely still unknown to the greater hospitality industry worldwide – will continue to dazzle guests from far and wide. Again, we wish you the best for this new year, and may 2024 bring you prosperity and a hunger to search for wild, untamed places in this world.

Located near Wilderness Bisate is Nyabitsinde Primary School, whose environmental clubs have raised 210 indigenous saplings in their tree nursery. As the trees were ready to be planted, and inspired by the reforestation project at Bisate, a few weeks ago the school requested a tree planting activity on the Bisate property.

On Friday 15 December the school children visited Bisate and planted their trees on land we recently added to the Bisate property to further expand our reforestation efforts.

It was great to see all the motivated young conservationists committed to planting their trees. Next year these trees should already be a lot bigger, and the children are excited to come and visit them to see their progress.

Hospitality is not just a job, it is truly a calling. In this difficult but rewarding career, there come certain sacrifices that one must make. One is the long hours that we work and the time and love that we put in for our lovely guests. The other is the fact that we work in these incredible places, but seldom get to experience the beauty ourselves.

This second issue can sometimes be rectified by the very same guests who stay with us. This last month, we had a wonderful family who donated five gorilla permits so that some of our staff could go and see the main attraction here – the gorillas. Names were thrown in a hat and five lucky staffers were drawn. Lunch packs and trekking gear were organised, and a Land Cruiser and coffees were provided to give our staff the true guest experience.

We are happy to report that our staff had a spectacular gorilla encounter and have come back with stories that they don’t hesitate to share with our guests. It really is these gestures that make it all worthwhile, and we once again tip our collective hat to our lovely guests who made this all possible.