At the end of August I met up with my friend Wendy – who recently finished a Peace Corps Response project in Malawi – to see the gorillas in Rwanda. When Wendy came back to Africa at the end of last year she said that one of the things she wanted to do was see the gorillas. I said, “sign me up!” Going gorilla tracking is one of those things that can languish on your “to do” list. It’s not cheap. So having a friend who was committed to making it happen was just what I needed.
We booked our tour through Bizidanny – recommended to me by a former colleague. I would also recommend them. They were very responsive to emails and everything was well organized. Ask for Sam as your guide. We had him for our city tour of Kigali and absolutely loved him. Learned more in that 1/2 day with him than we did the rest of our trip.
Traditional dancing by the local school kids at Mountain Gorilla Lodge
We stayed at the Mountain Gorilla View Lodge in Ruhengeri – just a 5 minute drive from park headquarters. Every afternoon at 4:30 the local school kids do traditional dancing for the guests. It was pretty cheesy. They smiled kind of creepily at us and kept saying “Welcome to Rwanda!” over and over again. Then there was the stern school teacher glaring over them as they performed. Maybe I’ve lived in Africa for too long; the other guests probably liked it.
Our guide, Francois, who has worked for 29 years and worked with Dian Fossey
Sunday was our day for tracking. We purchased our permits in February because July/August are supposed to be the high season. We met a woman who was able to get 2 permits just a few weeks before, but I wouldn’t risk it. Plus it costs the same whether you buy early or buy late. We were picked up by our guide from Bizidanny – Tarza – and taken to the Parc National des Volcans headquarters. We milled around the grounds while he joined the other guides to negotiate a place for us in a group. There are only 64 permits sold each day – so 8 groups of 8 people. We told Tarza to get us in a group with an easy or medium hike. While we were waiting I randomly ran into Gilbert who was the Administrative Officer for Peace Corps in Botswana and is currently the Country Director in Namibia. It was SO random. I love those small world moments. The group we were placed in had a family of 3 from Boston plus 3 younger guys from Europe.
From the park headquarters
we had to drive 20-30 minutes to the trail head. From there we hiked for about 1.5 hours into the forest to find the gorillas. Before I went to Rwanda many people asked me questions along the lines of “Are you guaranteed to see the gorillas?” and I always told people that they are wild animals – so, no – but that I hadn’t heard any stories of people going and not seeing them. I know enough people – either directly or indirectly – who have been so I figured if that was a possibility I would probably have heard about it. Now I know why that doesn’t happen. There are two men with big guns – called trackers – who stay with each of the gorilla groups 24 hrs/7 days a week. They protect them from poachers, watch their health and let the guides from the park know the groups location on a day-to-day basis.
Speaking of guide, we were really lucky and got someone who is one of the more famous guides – Francois. He’s worked as a guide for 29 years and even worked with Dian Fossey. He was fantastic. Along the hike he stopped several times to show us the various plants that gorillas eat – often eating them himself! He was also great at making sure that everyone was staying with the group.
When we first approached the gorillas they were all up in the trees. You could see fuzzy black hair through little, tiny holes in the leaves. My first thought was, great, this is not what I was expecting. My second thought was, “I hope those bamboo trees can hold hundreds of pounds of gorilla!” It was a little unnerving for them to be climbing directly overhead. In terms of my expectations, I thought that we’d come across the group sitting in a clearing where we’d sit 20 feet away and watch them eat and play for an hour. Our experience was much cooler than that.
After Francois convinced the gorillas to come out of the tree we got to watch them eat and interact with each other. Moving from place to place through the thick forest. If we had been 20 feet away we wouldn’t have been able to see anything. Instead Francois took us within 5 feet of the silverback – Guhonda – the largest silverback in the park. He was ENORMOUS, but totally chill. He mostly just sat on the ground with his arms crossed while we took hundreds of pictures of him. (No, seriously, I took almost 300 pictures in that 1 hour just myself!) There was a baby who came down from the trees and played a little bit. We also saw several females, although they all look the same to me so I lost track of who was who. Altogether I think we saw about 6-7 of the 12 gorillas in the group. (Did you know that gorilla nose prints are all different, like human fingerprints? Not that that’s helpful to me in identifying them.)
There isn’t one moment that stands out from the hour we spent with the gorillas. Nobody did anything spectacular. No fights. No chest thumping. Just gorillas doing there thing with 8 people snapping pictures. It was darn cool.
More to come in another post on the other places we visited during our trip.
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