This past weekend I finally had a chance to go trekking in the Volcano National Park to see the mountain gorillas. It was an incredible experience. I went with my two friends, Ilona and Kristi, who are currently visiting me to volunteer in Rwanda. We got to Musanze on Friday and stayed with Jessica, another PCV based near there. A car that I arranged for in advance came and picked us up at 6:15 am. We then drove to the tourist office in Kinigi to get our entrance tickets to the National Park and to get briefed on etiquettes and proper behavior when around the gorillas.
After the briefing, we got assigned to a gorilla group to visit. I wanted to see the Sosa group, the largest and more secluded of all, but we couldn’t go there since a team from the National Geographic had already booked that group to film for a documentary on the Mountain Gorillas. Instead we got to see the Umubano group. The umubano group consisted of a silverback, two blackbacks, three famales, and 6 baby gorillas.
It took us about 2.5 hours to get our first sighting of the gorillas, Charles the silverback.
We then got to see a mother and her child, then more of the Umubano group. We got to get so close to the gorillas and experience them in their natural habitat. One of the little baby gorillas was so curious of us and kept coming towards us. However, we had to move back keeping with the 7m distance rule from the gorillas.The gorillas exhibit a very close behavior to humans, in their looks, they way the nurse and care for their babies, and they way they interact and look.
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