Kenya Migration and Rwanda Mountain Gorilla Trek trip report, Aug. 2005
Part 3

RAWANDA and the Mountain Gorilla's of the Vurunga mountains.
Enjoy Please!

With some wonder of what to expect in the Genocide aftermath country of Rwanda, we were delighted with her resilient people. Eleven years after the genocide the new government and wonderful cooperatives created by outside agencies have helped these sad people to rebuild their lives! They are amazing and strong, the women are now the majority of the work force with strong efforts to rebuild underway. The sadness lies in the faces of the people as everyone lives were touched by this horrendous genocide that was pretty much ignored by the rest of the world. It is shocking. The new memorial of the genocide in Kigali is something everyone needs to see, however with a box of tissue.

We stayed our first night in Kigali before another early morning rise at 0330am to drive the 90 min to where we meet with the rangers to be assigned our first trek with a gorilla family! I have waited so long to be able to do this, ever since the movie about Dian Fossey and Gorilla's in the Mist. I was so excited I could not stand it, even with only a few hours of sleep! We entered Volcano National park, our guide here is very important as he helps to get us the Gorilla family of choice as he speaks with the head Ranger. There are 8 habituated Gorilla Families, however only 5 are for tourists. The other 3 are mostly for the researchers to study. In the Varunga mountain region there are only about 300 or so Mt Gorilla's with some 600 total left in the world.

Since we were so tired we thought it wise to not try the most difficult family of Susa which has 38 gorillas, and a new born only born the day before. So we all went as one group the 5 of us to trek to Sabinya family group of 11 Gorillas, described as an easy trek. Hmmmmmm. We start these treks at elevation of about 8800 to 9000 ft above sea level.

There is a maximum of 8 trekkers allowed plus the guide, porters to carry our back packs and trackers who start out early am to find the groups, they are on walky talkies with the guides. All very well organized to minimize the strenuous trek to find the beloved Gorilla's. From the start of our trek, it took 2 hours for us to locate the family, we are only allowed 1 hour from that point. No walking sticks or packs allowed here, only your camera. After an interesting climb through bamboo fields and dense jungle, we were told they were close! The guides love these beauties, and try to get us close to them for great photo opportunities. I was amazed how close we got, the rules say not to get closer than 21 feet away unless they approach you.

In the open there they were, the Silver back in all his glory!! Wow, I have yet to find the words to describe the sight of 7 gorillas all very close to us eating without a care in the world we were there! I think that was most amazing, they hardly even looked at us. I had night mares of not being able to keep my eyes down as we read in the literature, and the Silver back charging me or carrying me away. NOT. They could care less and you can look in their eyes all you want, ever since Dian Fossey has been with them they do not mind if you look at them in the eye. How wonderful as I had wonderful eye contact with a full grown female and it was lovely. The other giant surprise is how BIG the silver back's head is, it appears to be 1/3 of its body size, just massive! They are so very beautiful in this rugged inhospitable environment. It gets very cold at night in the mountains.

The poaching appears to be stopped, it was the antelope snares that was causing most of the current problems as the Gorillas would get snared and could die from a missing foot. They have worked hard to eliminate most of them. There are military on each trek to safeguard the people on the trek as well. The guides make a low grunt to signal to the silverback we are there and he waits for a grunt back which tells the guide we are accepted. It is all very much like clockwork there.

After the Gorillas rise from sleep at night the Silver back's job is to find plenty of food for them as they consume about 70# of greenery per day. They are on the move constantly except when it is rest time which you can set by your watch. At about 9:00am to 10:00am they rest, they lay around and play or nap. This is when you hope to find them so you have a good amount of time while they are resting as opposed to when they are on the move in the impenetrable jungle!

We lucked out and they where there in the open, however not long and they went inside the undergrowth, so there we went. The trackers cut down foliage for us to get to the Gorillas which we did, very odd to be so thick in the middle of this jungle with no path's! It was a bit harder to try to get photos in here where it was darker and lots of branches between the Gorillas and us. It did not matter, we had playful toddlers to entertain us, it was so amazing how close we were to them and they simply did not care, another had been up in a tree and fell out backwards at our feet! Unreal and amazing this is for us!