Day 56 – GORILLAS!!!!

After breakfast on Friday, we climbed into our Land Cruisers for a short drive up to the visitor’s center at the Parc National des Volcans. The park is home to the world’s largest number of endangered mountain gorillas. As the name implies, the park encompasses 5 massive volcanoes (Karisimbi, Bisoke, Muhabura, Gahinga and Sabyinyo) and is covered in dense rainforest. We met our two Gorilla Guides (a coveted job for Rwandans) and got a briefing about our trek for the day. We would be headed out to find the Umubano family of gorillas which was lead by a mighty Silverback named Charles.



A separate team of gorilla trackers had been on the volcano since sunrise trying to locate our family of gorillas so they could radio us the GPS coordinates for our hike up. After bumping along a road which resembled a rocky dry river bed, we arrived at the base of our volcano. We were a little surprised to see two men in uniform sporting very large automatic weapons. Our guide informed us that the Rwandan Army had stationed these two armed guards here for our protection from animals and from “bad people” who might wander over from the Congo.



After a short hike through the dense forest (our guides used machetes to clear the way), we met up with our trackers at an altitude of ~7900 feet. We sat and watched the gorillas snack on branches, climb trees, beat their chests and wrestle with each other. Our time with them was capped at 1 hour by park regulations to make sure we don’t disrupt their daily routines too much. Standing so close to a 200 kg blackback gorilla (a younger version of a silverback) was quite exhilarating and a little scary. Gorillas are said to be 5 times stronger than humans and a friend from another group confirmed this (A gorilla slapped him in the leg because he was standing in the trail that the gorilla wanted to walk down.)



We returned to camp just after lunch and spent the afternoon organizing our gear and repacking in preparation for our long trip back to the good ol’ USA.