Trekking with the Gorillas in the Volcanoes National Park

Roman and I took a weekend for ourselves and completed another item on our "bucket List" yesterday morning by trekking with the Eastern Mountain Gorillas in Rwanda on the Congolese Border in the Parc du Volcanoes National. The pictures don't do it justice and I still cannot believe that we were given this once in a lifetime chance. We booked our permits through Amahoro Tours a number of months ago. At $550USD this is not a cheap activity but the conservation efforts that have been underway (using money from the permit fees) have been extremely successful. I had that feeling that despite the horrible things we hear about these gorilla populations, there has been real results and a steady increase in numbers. The 'trackers' who take you to find the group/family that you have been assigned to are so deeply protective of their gorillas that they have 2 trackers following each family all the time to protect them from poachers and from falling into traps set by poachers to catch other bush meat (but that gorillas can still fall into). The trackers grunt all sorts of different grunts as we approached..giving the message that we were coming in peace..it was like a low deep throaty sound and you can hear the gorillas answer back with an almost identicle sound. We found the group fairly quickly and it wasn't long before the only male in this group, a silverback approached from behind the group. You could smell him first...like a stinky athlete...like human body odor but 10 times stronger. He didn't pay much attention to us. We were a group of 8, the maximum allowed per trekking group. We were allowed one hour with them. There were twins in this group, known as the HIRWA group. They are a few months old but they were hidden by their mother. We did seea two week old newborn who was nursing on her mom and we saw some cute little infants and toddlers....one of them ranand grabbed by jacket and tugged on it and ran back to the nearest female...I just froze...we had been told..do not touch them or sneeze or cough or spit near them...they have 97% of our genes and can therefore catch human illnesses....influenza could easily kill them.
The trek back to the main centre ended with a certificate presentation to each of us. We caught our last few glimpses of the beautiful volcanoes towering over the valley..breathtaking. The one in t he picture is called Sabinyho..which in Kinyarwandan means 'old mans teeth'.... I can see what they mean.

The trip out of the Gorilla View Lodge to head down the volcanoe to Ruhengeri was one of those things we wished we have on video to post on YouTube...as we drove out of the gate of the lodge the truck ran out of gas. The driver was very embarrassed and couldn't believe he had allowed that to happen...he is a seasoned guide who travels all over Rwanda weekly. Well, as it turned out, we started to coast along the road....and then we coasted some more...we ran over about 20 speed bumps and after 15 minutes had travelled 19 kilometres down the volcanoe!! Without gas!! WE passed through some small villages along the way and people were looking at us probably wondering why a big old safari truck was so silent..we just drifted along. At onepoint Roman and our friend Gary got out to give it a tiny push and then hopped back in. As we reached Ruhengeri and a bust intersection we drifted through a stop sign and managed to turn left into traffic!! We then negotiated a right hand turn right into a gas station and floated right up to the diesel pump....we were killing ourselves laughing...you had to be there to belive it.

I will tell you more about Rwanda later...there is a whole other story to tell...and sometimes words fail me. The genocide is ever present. The country has come a long way in 16 years since the 1994 genocide that killed 1 million people. There is immense development going on but there still remains extreme poverty. I have attached a picture of the kids who met us at the trailhead when we arrived back from the trek. The poverty is real.