Our main reason for our previous vacation was to go and take a visit to the mountain gorillas, well known as one of the critically endangered primates on this planet earth.
From our travel agent at Africa Adventure Safaris we learned that the gorilla tracking is easier in Rwanda than that in Uganda.
Really l cannot compare it with a Uganda tracking, but the trip we made to trek the gorillas in volcanoes national park was certainly at the top most level in contrast to other treks in other countries.
This adventurous trip begun as we reported at the headquarters of volcanoes national park. At this point, we were briefed about the dos and don’ts while with the gorillas and also hand in our gorilla permits and finally the ranger guides assigned gorilla groups to us. Lucky enough, we were nominated to the Agashya group, the second largest group in this park.
We transferred to our starting point, hired porters and that is the best thing we ever did. He provided us with walking sticks and assistance through all the rough patches in the hike within the park and that’s why they are highly recommended to all trekkers by the ranger guides. Within a few minutes on our Hike, we found a family of mountain gorillas, but unfortunately it wasn’t our designated family.
We entered the forest and started off the hike in search of the mountain gorillas. This took us a while of about one and half hours to reach the area where the gorillas were.
We and our ranger guides left the porters behind with our luggage and we took a short climb to an open and bushy area which made us closer and nearer to these gentle apes plus giving s us a good view of these gentle giants.
This gorilla family had some really juvenile gorillas, the youngest being less than one year old. And we got a chance of seeing them all, some playing while others giving much care to the young ones. This was really great!
Usually, trekkers are advised to stay 5 meters away from these animals, but in our case, the stubborn ones came closer to us which gave us an opportunity of really seeing what a gorilla is. Our ranger guides had to prevent the gorillas from mixing up with our group who had com to trek. We really were that close.
After about half an hour or so, the silver back checked in. We moved through the area to get really near to him and to my estimation think the closest was almost 4 meters and surprisingly he never bothered hiding but he instead kept around.
The guide and other trackers, we were all really great because we managed to move in the area and trying to get dramatic views for the whole Agashya family. The guides really were a great help to us during our time with these critically endangered animals, we were able to move safely around the whole family and to get us to the best spots to capture memorable photographs of mountain gorillas.
As soon as the elapse of one hour, we were told to ascend back to the park headquarters and leave the family carry out its activities.
To my conclusion, it was one of the most incredible hours in my whole life, probably even the most exciting one. The climb was not too hard, but it surely did give you the feeling you were visiting mountain gorillas.
If you ever want to visit these most beautiful creatures next to human beings. I highly recommend that you do the trek in Rwanda as it is the perfect place to visit.