We woke up early and made our way to Volcanoes National Park where the Mountain Gorilla’s are known to reside. There are only 700 Gorilla’s left in the wild but thankfully secondary to a cessation of illegal poaching and careful tracking and research this population is slowly increasing. In Volcanoes National Park there are 13 families, 8 of which are tracked for tourists and 5 are monitored for research. Our trekking group of 8 were given the family named Bwenge. This beautiful family had 11 members including 3 babies, a Blackback, and a large Silverback who was the dominant male in the group - he was awesome! We trekked for an hour and a half through quite thick rainforest with our guides and porters cutting the path with machete’s before we found them. But, when we did it was awesome! We watched the family from a short distance for over an hour, the adults in the group slept for most of the time with some intermittent inquisitive looks and one small charge from one of the mothers, but the babies provided lots of entertainment. They were so inquisitive, playful, cute, and very funny. At the end of the hour the Silverback made some noises to wake the rest up which was very awesome to see and hear. They all rose from their morning slumber and moved around to find some food. An absolutely amazing experience!
On return to our campsite we wandered into town to explore Ruhengeri centre which was a typical African town with a crazy local market full of everything from second hand clothing, electrical appliances, to meat, and fruit and veg. We then finished off a fabulous day with a fantastic group dinner in a local African restaurant.
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