Originally posted: Aug 22, 2017
Waking up at 5am had never been so easy, it was the day of the gorilla trek!
After breakfast we all hopped into 5 vans and headed off at 6:30am. Got to the gorilla meeting point where there was probably over 100 other tourists waiting. While we waited for our permits to be sorted there was a dance performance and tea and coffee.
Once the permits were sorted we were broken up into our groups for the day which was who was in our van in the morning, my group was Megan, Eli, Elisa, Pascie and Celine. Our guide was called Roger and he had worked in the park for 7 years. He told us that we would be going to see the Kuryma Family. Named after the previous silverback, Kuryma had since died and the new silverback was Vuba. I think he said there was 13 in this family and there was a new baby called Ndezeye and his mother was Pasaka.
We drove 30 minutes to our starting point in Volcanoes National Park where the gorillas are. Volcanoes National Park is exactly what it sounds like – bulk volcanoes!
I had mentally prepared myself for a tough day of hiking (not physically prepared because let’s be honest it’s me we’re talking about here) The tour trip notes and previous accounts of people doing the trek I had read talked about potentially hiking up to 6 hours up the side of the volcano through thick jungle. Going through rivers and mud and we were told to bring gloves because you might need to drag yourself up and it’s best to have protection for your hands. So really I was expecting a hard day but to be rewarded at the end with the gorillas.
It. Was. Easy.
The toughest part of the walk was the first 30 minutes up the steep slope of the volcano through farms and properties. And by tough I mean I had to stop a couple of times to catch my breath (note to self: do more exercise). We got to the edge of the park and were met by a tracker. The trackers wake up first thing in the morning and go find the gorillas, they spend all day with the gorillas until they go to sleep so that they know where to start looking the next day. We walked along the stone wall that fenced the park to an entry point a bit further down.
From there we continued to climb up the volcano but it was not as steep, we were walking along a path so there was no pushing through thick jungle. The mud I was worried about? It’s dry season! No rain = no mud. We walked through a couple of places where you could tell would be rough to try to squelch your way through during rainy season.
We had hired 2 porters as well, so I didn’t even have to carry my bag! Only thing I carried was my stupid walking stick which I decided was a great idea to have because it had a cool gorilla on top.
After only an hour and a half of trekking *cough walking* we met the other trackers. We had to leave our bags behind at this point and were only allowed to carry our cameras.
We followed the trackers but the family had moved so we had to stay put while the trackers went and found them again. A short while later we were guided to the family, we went through the thick forest and suddenly we had 4 gorillas in front of us!! The mother, baby, a younger female and a 7 year old male! I was sooooooo excited, I was mentally jumping around like crazy!
We walked up a bit closer to them and were only 1-2 metres from then. A few minutes after we had been there the 7 year old male suddenly ran at me and grabbed my bum!!!!! He then grabbed hold of my leg and sort of pulled at me for a second then let go. I was a mixture of holy crap a gorilla just ran at me is this dangerous? And also OMG A GORILLA JUST GRABBED ME, BEST DAY EVER!! The others in my group said I had gone completely white (whiter than normal I suppose) and I was shaking for a good 10 minutes afterwards.
Just as I got over my gorilla interaction the same gorilla jumped down from higher ground and wrapped its arms around Eli and Megan, full wrestling move going on! Our guide said it was nothing to worry about and that they like to play. Ok! Still don’t want to play with a gorilla who weighs more than me and could snap me in two! As much as I loved it I’m still wary of him being a wild animal!
We spent the next hour watching the gorillas, in total we saw 8 gorillas. The first 4, another 2 a bit further up the hill and we walked a bit through the forest and saw the big silverback and another male! They were both sleeping, I couldn’t quite see the size of them because they were lying down. I wasn’t too bothered because the thought of a silverback jumping around like the younger male had been earlier gave me the horrors!
We spent most of the time with the original 4 we saw which was fantastic. The baby was so playful, running all around, it came right up to us on a number of occasions. It was amazing how human like they are as well! I loved every moment of it!!
Roger told us our time was up, and we very reluctantly left the family behind. We went back and grabbed our bags and headed back down the volcano, moved a lot faster going down the hill!
When we got to the edge of the forest we continued down a different path through the farms, had kids running from all directions to wave at us as we walked down and then we had a group of 6 of them start doing a song and dance as we went by which was pretty cool!
Hopped in our van and went to the shops so we could get our certificates and do some souvenir shopping if we wanted. Met up with the others and caught up on their experiences from the morning. No one else had any butt grabbing going on!
Got back in the van and went back to town, such an amazing experience and I’d come back again in a heartbeat!
Fun Facts – Gorillas at Volcanoes National Park
- Volcanoes National Park spreads across Rwanda, Uganda and Congo. There are eight volcanoes in the park.
- Volcanoes National Park is the only place in the world where you can see mountain gorillas and the golden monkey (bonus picture below of golden monkey)
- Due to conservation Mountain Gorilla numbers are going up – our guide said that not many more families would be able to live in the area because there would be too many.
- At one point we were only 2km from the border with Congo
Golden Monkey – we did a short walk the day after the Gorillas and spent an hour pushing through bamboo forest chasing these guys around. Amazing!
