Gorillas in My Midst

Met by our host and driver for the week, Yves from the Rwanda Development Board, and Innocent, from Uber Lux, our first stop was in Kigali itself, and we headed straight for The Retreat, a small, 11-room boutique hotel (and a little slice of heaven after the almost 11-hour flight).

Centrally located, you can easily and safely head out to explore, and there are personal guides at the hotel on hand to show you a different side of the city: everything from fashion tours, arts and cultural activities (I particularly enjoyed our walk through some of the lively, local neighbourhoods), to nature hikes, culinary experiences and coffee masterclasses.

We also stopped by the Genocide Memorial Centre – a hard place to visit, but a truly moving experience, trying to get your head around the country's history and what its people went through (the gardens a beautiful tribute to those who perished during this horrible time).​

Game drives can be quite long from here as to get to the savannah in the North would mean being out all day with a picnic lunch, but the boat trips from here are sensational. 

You can get out onto the water and up close to the hippos – a dream come true for me as I absolutely love them… they always remind me of an African bushman fable I used to read to my nephew. And when we set off on our boat trip, just before sunset, they certainly didn't disappoint!

There's also plenty of birdlife to seek out, and our guide picked the perfect spot for us to sit watch the sun set. ​

​​From Akagera it was a four-hour transfer to Kigali from the park's north entrance (though helicopter is an option), and then five hours on to Nyungwe National Park in the southwestern corner of the country. You can break the journey up though as in-between there's Rwanda's cultural corridor. Visit the Kings Palace Museum, enjoy a display of traditional dances, or visit Butare's Ethnographic Museums to learn more about Rwanda's culture and history. But our guide, Everest, treated us instead to a three-hour canopy walk before we hit our destination!

While I'd presumed we were just taking a stroll, much to my dismay we stopped at the canopy walk: three swing bridges suspended over the treetops, the longest being 100 metres up! I've dived with sharks and been on numerous shark feeds but this was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life! I'm still not sure how, but I made it across (apparently, the valley views below are quite breathtaking, but my eyes were only focused on the end of each bridge!). 

​The final stop on our excellent adventure was Volcanoes National Park, in the far northwestern corner of Rwanda, home to the magnificent Mountain Gorillas and Golden Monkeys. Sharing the border with three countries, there are eight volcanoes here, but only five have gorillas.We stayed at the colonial-style Bishops House, right in the middle of Musanze, which felt a lot like a home away from home, with lovely little touches like hot water bottles and such, but I was way too excited to sleep!

It may be hard to top such a thrilling experience like seeing the Mountain Gorillas, but the Golden Monkey trek in a group of around eight people is a wonderful way to start your experience here. The Volcanoes National Park has two habituated Golden Monkey troops who live in the bamboo vegetation towards the base of the volcanoes, and again the treks can be anything from an hour to several, depending on the speed of the monkeys. They are so entertaining and interesting to watch though – always moving around and jumping from tree to tree (so not the easiest to photograph!). And on the plus side, they don't like too much altitude, so don't venture too far up!​

Fresh droppings! I have to say I was over the moon, not just to see the Gorillas, but because my back was covered in nettle stings, and I'm sure a fire ant had got into my socks! Of course all that went away when we saw the cane moving, and heard the guttural grunts.

It was really scary at first, it felt like King Kong could just jump out of the bushes at us, while we're trying to keep our balance as the floor is just rotting cane (not to mention we're right on the side of a volcano!). And then there they were. One Silverback and a few toddlers. Who would have thought we would be so close…?! I could have just sat there and been very happy for an hour.

The Silverback stood up and looked quite impressive, but apparently he was a number 2, so still quite young. I started to move round and down towards another area when the bushes moved, and another Gorilla just rolled out in front of me, so I used the noise we were taught back at base, and the tracker told me to just move on and walk past! While I really didn't want to leave, we were so lucky as there were even more below!