When we finally arrived in the Kigali International Airport on Tuesday night, we were welcomed with the fact that one of us was missing a piece of luggage! We continued on though, and our driver, Abi, drove us up a windy mountain road for three hours until we reached the small town of Ruhengeri (roo - hen - jerry), where the Gorilla Mountain View Hotel is located. The hotel is run on a generator that is off over night, but the hotel has amazing hospitality and they made us a warm fire, and gave us hot water bottles for our beds. We got three hours of semi-sleep, waking up at 5:30 am to trek to the mountain gorillas.
The walk was easy - for the first hour, and then about half way through we started a steep incline that would lead us up a mountain to nearly 9,000 feet. However, we did not completely do the trek alone...we would have never completed it without the help of porters, local Rwandans who carry your bags up the mountain and help you whenever you need it. We at first hired porters as a way to support the employment initiative, but soon realized they were an imperative part of making it up to the gorillas (they literally pushed and pulled us at times). We finally spotted a gorilla, and it was shocking and breathtaking; more so than we even anticipated. We got to spend a little over an hour with the Sabinyo Gorilla family, and took amazing shots of these creatures who share 97% of their DNA with humans. When we got back from our six hour adventure with the gorillas it started to heavily rain, and we all conked out from lack of sleep.
The next morning we woke again at 5:30 am, but had a lot more sleep the night before! We made our way through fields and fields of potato plants, and then spotted our first golden monkey after only an hour. There were dozens of them leaping from tree to tree, and making funny and loud noises. We spent an hour with them then reluctantly made our way back through the fields of agriculture to our cars, looking forward to our next adventure.
photos to come once we have better internet!
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