Grrrrrrillas!

I have finally been to see the Mountain Gorillas of Rwanda.  Something I have been looking at doing for the last 10 years.  So, being a resident of Rwanda it seemed a shame not to take advantage of the half price permit fee.  Also, prices went up on 1^st June so we bought our permits before that in order to get them at the old rate.

We set off for Kinigi guesthouse outside the park the night before our trek was due and found ourselves just a few metres from the Park HQ and start of the trek.  We arrived at the Volcanoes National Park HQ before 7am.  There was a display of Intorre dancing taking place and the area was buzzing.  Treks up the volcanoes, visits to Golden Monkeys and visits to the Gorillas all set off from here.  We had our own driver in our group (thank you, Becky!) and we had heard we would need to attend a briefing for drivers.  This is also where groups are assigned, so we were keen to not miss it.  We had discussed our preference the night before and decided that an “easy” walk was not for us, but we were unsure if we were up for a “hard” walk, so we wanted a “moderate” group.  Of course, all this relies on the gorillas being in an easy or moderate distance of the Park HQ.

We managed to shove Becky into the scrum of drivers (mostly from safari companies – so well used to the protocol here) and from the quick fire Kinyarwanda we could hear and the look on her face, we realised we had no idea what was happening.  Drivers began gesticulating and Becky worked out this was to do with numbers, so she shoved four fingers in the air to indicate how many of us there were.  Each family of gorillas is assigned 8 people, so numbers are important.  The organiser looked at her and said “good group”   “No! No!” we cried – “That sounds bad – we are not good, we need an easy walk”.  All the other drivers laughed at us.  We were in the good group.  They assured us we would be OK and told us where to wait.  Then we were introduced to Francois, our guide for the day and he took us off for a briefing.

Francois has been doing this for 31yrs.  Before her death, he was friends with Dian Fossey for 5 years.  He is a very knowledgeable man and very entertaining.  He gave us a talk about the family we would visit – Titus.  A group of ten gorillas and they have a 3 month old baby in the group, which was recently named Desire at the gorilla naming ceremony held each year.  We were told the walk was maybe one or two hours. 

After a quick vehicle inspection (and much laughter from the male guides that this mad group of women was going to drive themselves), we were led off on a drive for about 20mins.  We then parked up on a hillside and began our walk.  At first we passed through terraced hillsides and by many homes.  At some of them, groups of children stopped to say hello and a few even had dance routines ready for us.  It was all quite festive.  There was a lot of conversation over the radio between Francois and the trackers up on the volcano.  After about 45mins we reached the base of the trackers and a couple of guards with guns joined our group.  We then crossed the wall into the jungle.  It was so dense!  Our guides had to slash the vegetation with a machete to make some semblance of a path and we pushed our way through.  There had been elephants and buffalo in the area, so we had to keep a watch out for them.  Further discussion with the trackers revealed the gorillas did not want to be found too easily and they seemed to be constantly on the move. 

Eventually, after more than 3 hours, we met a group of trackers in a clearing.  This was exciting!  It meant we were with 100m of the gorillas.  We had to leave all our bags with the trackers and were then led through a mass of vegetation and suddenly fell into a small clearing and there, right in front of us, just 2 metres away, was a family of gorillas.  I was surprised by how exciting and emotional this made me feel.  Francois quickly began to communicate with the silverback, who indicated he was ok with us being there and we were ushered into line formation along the edge of the clearing.  The gorillas were napping – so this is a good time to visit as they are not moving too much.  The Silverback continued to communicate with Francois and did a little bit of leaping around to show us how ferocious he could be then he sat down and made some happy noises.  We just watched.  Completely enthralled by these animals, who look so much like us.  The baby was clambering over his Mum.  Some of them just looked at us quizzically, others just stared through one open eye, before dozily closing it again and having another nap. 

After about 25mins, there was movement and the gorillas moved back into the undergrowth of the surrounding jungle.  We followed at a distance and it was at this point I found myself about a metre and a half from the silverback.  He was just munching on the foliage.  I started to video him and then, he decided to jump up and run towards me.  I tucked my head in and got as small as I could.  He wasn’t after me, he just ran the other side of the tree from where I was, but boy did he come close!  We continued to watch them move around – sometimes coming really close to us.

An hour with gorillas goes quickly, but it was a totally magical hour and was fascinating to sit and watch them in their habitat.  The stop watch chimed and the hour was up and we had to go.  The gorilla groups are only visited by a maximum of 8 people each day for a maximum of one hour.  The National Park appear to be conserving their environment well and the number of Mountain Gorillas has really grown in recent years.

For anyone thinking of doing it, I would whole-heartedly recommend it.  Not only was the hour we spent with the gorillas a memorable and beautiful one, but also the walk through the jungle was exciting and hard work – making the visit more rewarding.  Rwanda uses the money from gorilla visits to protect the environment they live in and it seems to be a really worthwhile thing to do.  It is a shame that most people who come as tourists to Rwanda only do so to fly in and rush up to Musanze for a one day visit before flying out again.  Rwanda has so much more to offer.  One of the best things about this country is the people.  To leave without having experienced the people of Rwanda is a sad thing.  My hope is, that one day soon, tourism will develop a little more in this country so more people are encouraged to travel around.  There are guest houses in every small town and the bus network is very good and quite cheap, so it would be an excellent place for any backpacker.