Following on from my last post, we landed in Kigali and being a PH with my own Cruiser, I was very happy to see our tour vehicle was a Curiser 🙂

We headed off to Volcanoes National Park which was around a 3 hour drive to our hotel / lodge – Gorilla Mountain View Lodge.

I must say – for being such a remote place, it is truly luxurious. we settled in and waiting for the morning for the great trek.

We were quite a large group (12) so we were split up into two groups of 6 as they allow a maximum of 8 persons per group on the Gorillas.

The drive to the entrance of the park is quite hair-raising, bridges made form tree trunks that look like they want to give way when you drive over them.

From where the car parks, its about a 30 minute hike to the entrance of the park where you are met with armed park rangers. Apparently they are armed incase there is a buffalo or elephant charge, although this has never happened.

You then hike through some really think bamboo forests and really think bush forest to where the trackers have found the group of gorillas that you are going to be viewing -it took around two and a half hours to get to the family.

When we got the, we were told we have one hour to spend with them and to not touch them under any circumstances. If a little one had to squeal, the Silver Back would attack so we kept our distance to around two meters.

It was truly amazing being around the gorillas and I would recommend it to everyone to at least do this trip once in their lives.

On the way down we came across the little Golden monkeys which are apparently family of the Blue (Vervet) Monkey found here in South Africa.

While in Kagili on the way to the Airport, we stopped in at the Genocide Museum which was truly a heart breaking place to visit. just over 290,000 people buried in a mass grave there with a few of the children’s skulls on display.

I urge you to save the money and go experience this once in a life time experience.

PH, Adriaan Wepener