"GORILLAS" a Virunga Travel Page by grets

---

Our visit to Rwanda was purely in order to see the endangered mountain gorilla.

---

Below are extracts from my diary written at the time:

As we are talking about tomorrow’s trek and I am sharing my concern about my lack of fitness holding the others up or maybe even preventing me from reaching the gorillas, a group of Americans arrive back. They look awful! Most of them can barely drag themselves along the room, they are covered in mud and sweat and when asked how they got on, they answer “it was the trek from hell!” They’ve been trekking for ten hours, on near-vertical muddy paths through impenetrable vegetation. One girl became so exhausted and scared of tumbling down the valley that she gave up before reaching the gorillas. Now I am really worried – this could be us tomorrow!

We set off early after breakfast tomorrow to try and get to the Park Headquarters first, but it seems other people have the same idea. Parc National des Volcans has four habituated groups of gorillas, two of which are much further away the others, and we would like to try and get the “easy” group. A maximum of eight permits are issued per group per day, and although the price of the permit is a rather steep $375, I don’t begrudge it as I hope that it can help provide security for the future of the mountain gorillas. The money gives the local population an incentive to preserve the gorillas and their habitat, as well as providing a 24hr armed guard. Not so long ago, poachers shot a female gorilla in the Susa group, stealing her baby – probably to order from a zoo somewhere in the world. Our rangers, Alphonse and Fidel, go through our briefing for the day’s tracking, in both French and English, as we are joined by four people from France. We have been assigned the Sabinyo Group, a family of nine individuals, and the nearest group. This morning they were observed about half an hour away, which lifts my spirits no end.