• Itinerary

The elephants of Akagera National Park have been transported from Bugesera (Kigali) in in the year 1975. By that time they were about 7 years old. Among those elephants, only 3 (Mwiza, Hélico and Mutware (the Chief) have been habituated, while the others remained wild.

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The two (Mwiza and Hélico) ended up by following the wild ones. Mutware, is still a solitary and he is still causing damage and maybe this is the reason why he is so famous. And because people only hear stories about this solitary elephant, the story goes that there is only one elephant in Akagera National Park.

However, at this moment the elephant population in the park is around 80. Mutware survived the 1994 war, but he lost his ivories.

Now he is the main attraction in the park and people from all over the world come to Rwanda and try to meet with this huge beast who lives in this beautiful Park.

Rwanda's famous Mutware (giant elephant a tourist attraction in Akagera National Park). Reuters Alert Net.

Submerged in the muddy waters of a Rwandan lake, Mutware cools down from the scorching morning heat, ignoring the crowd of visitors who have come to visit him. Flapping his ears as birds rest on his back, the 38-year-old rogue elephant seems out of sorts - there is no sign of the aggressive beast that wrecked at least three cars last year, prompting a security warning from the U.S. State Department. "Mutware, Mutware, wake up!" several villagers cry out, eager to please the tourists who have come to see the elephant. But it takes several hours and some cassava flour and leaves to Make Mutware move. Villagers say the elephant is tired after a long night of feeding on their crops. Mutware's bathing spot, Lake Ihema, in Rwanda's eastern Akagera Park, is just one of the attractions some 25,000 foreign tourists visited last year in tiny Rwanda.