Rwanda: Musanze (Mountain Gorillas)

The main event for this part of our holiday was trekking the mountain gorillas in the misty hills of Rwanda, near a small town called Musanze. On our way to Musanze, we visited the genocide memorial, which was quite the eye opener, considering the genocide in Rwanda was only 19 years ago. Horrific to think about how such an event can occur in the modern era in which we live.

Anyway, the main event – the Gorillas. The group was split into two for trekking activities over two days. Amanda and I were in the first group, meaning we tracked the gorillas yesterday (25^th) rather than today (26^th). Our group of 5 was joined by a couple from South Africa and appointed a guide. Our guide informed us that we were going to be going to the biggest family of Mountain Gorillas in Rwanda, the Anahoro, which has five Silverbacks, several Black Backs, juveniles and babies – family size of about 24 in total.

We set off, first in a car, and then a walk, and the weather wasn't kind, with low lying mist/fog reducing visibility to about, 10m and rain. Fortunately by the time we got out of the car to start our trek, the weather had cleared up a little. Our trek took us predominantly uphill for about two hours, the first hour of the trek, the path was very, very muddy, with mud up to about a foot deep in places. The next hour, we traversed fields of stinging nettle which we learnt pretty quickly could still get our legs through our mud stained trousers.

All the mud and all the nettles were well worth the trouble when we arrived. The experience we had was nothing short of sensational. The family of gorillas seemed to care little of our presence, which at times was within a metre or two of the gorillas, and played and ate while we took lots of photos and videos. The babies would play with each other, climbing trees and jumping onto their parents from the tree, tackling each other in a big rollie-pollie down the mountain. Meanwhile, the big silverbacks were keeping a watchful eye on all the activities as well as us. The leader beat his barrel like chest a few times to assert his dominance, which produced a very deep drumming noise that I can't really describe sufficiently to capture its impact.

After a little over an hour of observation and photos, it was time to go. The way down was a little easier as the sun had come out and dried the path, just a little bit but enough to help progress. At the end of the trek, our shoes were unrecognisable from the mud coating they had and our pants were covered in mud up to our knees. Our legs and hands were stinging from the nettles but it was all worth it because it was an experience like no other I've ever had (or possibly ever likely to experience again).