What are your first thoughts when I say Rwanda? Is it the spectacular mountains and scenery you’re surrounded by, the amazing local food, the beautiful and helpful people, a hike into the jungle to get up close to gorillas? If you thought any of these, then you’ve read my mind.
My husband and I spent 5 days in Rwanda, based mostly just out of Kigali, and it was nothing short of amazing. Our only regret was not staying longer. Our main reason for visiting Rwanda was to hike up a mountain in the hopes of getting to see a gorilla family in its natural habitat.
To do the gorilla hike, you must book through a tour company, this is not something you can do on your own. There are certain hikes for all fitness levels, and we chose one of the harder ones. Our trek was roughly 4 hours each way up an extinct volcano called Sabyinyo. We were allocated a gorilla family known as the “Hirwa” family, that consisted of 18 gorillas.
The trek started bright and fresh in the morning, and before we knew it, we were hiking deep into the jungle. There was a ranger about an hour ahead of us that was monitoring the Hirwa group and watching their movement, communicating by walkie talkie to the ranger leading our small group. We had hiked for 2 hours before having to turn around and go in another direction as the family was on the move. This didn’t bother us at all. We got to see some pretty amazing views in untouched land. There was no path or route to follow, we just followed our ranger and hoped for the best. Often, we were climbing up and over trees, on all fours climbing up slippery, muddy makeshift ‘steps,’ and walking across a cliff edge hanging on for dear life – don’t worry, the drop wasn’t too far.
Our first sighting of the gorillas took our breaths away. It was incredible and very surreal. Never in a million years did I think I would ever get to witness these beautiful creatures in the wild. There was silence within the group as we all watched in awe as this beautiful family went about their way in front of us. We watched the Mumma of the group, and 4 of her siblings. 2 of the juvenile gorillas were wrestling, tackling and rolling around, playing up for their mum who didn’t batter an eyelid. At one stage they had rolled past 4 other people in our group and right in front of where my husband and I were standing. We couldn’t believe our eyes, that we had 2 small (HUGE!) juvenile gorillas at our feet. Before we could move out of their way, they had moved along.
One of the older siblings took a shine to one of the men in our group and slapped his bum as he casually walked on by to get to another tree. It was the funniest thing I have ever seen! I speak for our entire group when I say that we were totally satisfied just standing there watching this small lot, before our ranger spotted the rest of the family not too far away. So, we climbed and crawled and walked to admire the other gorillas. There were 2 baby ones who were so so sweet and cute, a few more juveniles, and some older ones. We saw 16 in total.
The gorilla of all gorillas, the mighty Silverback, was nothing what I had imagined. I thought the juveniles were huge, but this guy was a beast. Wow he was massive! But very calm and placid as he sat there eating his bamboo lunch.
I can’t describe just how amazing these gorillas were, I could honestly write about them forever, but this is something you need to see with your own eyes. I urge you to add Rwanda to your list of travels and getting a chance to see the gorillas. This trip is by far one of my favourites ever.
