Blogs from Parc National des Volcans, Province du Nord, Rwanda, Africa

We bet Sigourney Weaver never fell on her butt when she checked out gorillas Volcanoes National Park in northern Rwanda is the home of the country's claim of fame, the mountain gorillas. The Volcanoes National Park covers a mountainous area where there are several volcanoes. The rugged slopes of these mountains, slopes covered with dense vegetation, is the environment the gorillas like to call home. They move around in large family groups spending most of the time eating it seemed like to us. The gorillas have no natural enemies so they can devout all their time to eating and relaxing. We suppose they could consider taking up a hobby or do sports as well but we haven't heard that any gorillas have done that yet. From what we understand they eat and then they eat more ... read more

Day 1/2 After an 8 hour flight into Nairobi, where they are 2 hours ahead, we caught a flight to Kigali which briefly landed in Burundi for passengers! The time difference in Rwanda is only 1 hour ahead of home. We collected our bags, we were met by Joe our Driver to take us to the Volcanoes National Park, which was a further 2 1/2 hour drive. The country is actual very mountainous, so to get there, we went up some quite steep roads, which aren't easy when you are behind a truck carrying bricks. We passed through lots of villages, and you know you are in Africa because: 1. Women balance their shopping on their heads, or chairs or anything really 2. 50% of people don't wear shoes 3. The children always smile and wave ... read more

This morning was the long-awaited gorilla trek and it did not disappoint! We made our way through the forest to reach the location of one of the gorilla families (the second largest family in Rwanda.) It was a completely different terrain than yesterday's volcano trek, but just as muddy. Good thing the hotel staff cleans our boots! Anyways, back to gorillas. There were 23 gorillas in the family, including one silverback, some adults, some juveniles and some babies. First thing we saw was two gorillas doing the hanky panky. I guess they wanted to put on a show for us, so I filmed it and Tyson called me a pornographer. Hehehe. We stayed with the gorillas for a full hour. While we were there, our guides kept communicating with them to let them know that we ... read more

Today Anne climbed a volcano and I received an armed escort out of the park. After arriving at the Volcano National Park and conducting a brief meet-and-greet with the guides and 5 other hike-mates we set off to the base of Bisoke. On the way we were treated to an extensive Rwandan massage (getting repeatedly tossed out of our seats) and joked about how small the volcano was in relation to Kilimanjaro. We joined up with our armed escort (for protection from the 'wildlife') and set off at a rocket-like pace. After the first hill, I was breathing heavily and shortly thereafter regreted making fun of Bisoke's height. When we stopped for our first 'break' we had been climbing for about 1.5 - 2.0 hours with myself and another woman from the UK (coincidently another engineer) ... read more

Up at 5.00am, breakfast at 5.45am and met up with my driver who will take my up to Park HQ. After what appears to be some sort of auction process where the guides and drivers all yell how many people they have in their group we are eventually assigned a Gorilla group to see. There are 6 of us that will visit with the Titus group. The guide explained that Titus was the son of Digit, Dianne Fossey's favourite. Titus was known as the kking of the Gorillas and had a very large family of around 35 Gorillas including 6 Silverbacks. His first son Rano was a rambunctious sort and got fed u being kept in line by his father so he split from the family and attempted to take some of the females with him ... read more