Mountain gorilla tracking trip in the Land of a Thousand Hills
Travel diaries around Rwanda
A trip to Rwanda should definitely be included in the plans of every seasoned traveler who appreciates nature and, like me, loves Africa.
Rwanda is a small country, slightly smaller than the Greater Poland Voivodeship, located in east-central Africa, bordering Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The areas that were once a German colony have a very interesting, although bloody, history.
The people of Rwanda were the Tutsi, Hutu and Twa tribes. Hutu were mainly engaged in agriculture. Although they were the most numerous tribe in Rwanda at that time, it was not them but the Tutsis who held power. Over the years, a caste system developed in which the Twa held the lowest social position.
The situation changed dramatically in 1994. There was a mass genocide of Hutu extremists against the Tutsi population. About a million people were murdered within 100 days. This is a very sad piece of history, but it should be remembered. In Rwanda, this is still a very reluctant topic to discuss. In the capital of the country, Kigali, it is worth seeing the Kigali Genocide Memorial - a monument commemorating the tragedy. 30 years after these bloody events, Rwanda is one of the safest countries in Africa.
When One&Only's long-time partner invited me to visit his two luxury hotels in Rwanda, I was speechless. Without hesitation, I expressed my desire to travel, because seeing mountain gorillas in their natural habitat had long been one of my travel dreams.
You can fly to Rwanda comfortably, with one transfer, via Amsterdam via KLM and Qatar Airways via Doha. Rwanda's main airport is Kigali. It is worth staying there overnight after arrival and spending the next day sightseeing.
The most popular national park in Rwanda is Akagera, where you can meet the Big Five - the African elephant, the black rhinoceros, the lion, the buffalo and the leopard. I also visited Nyungwe Forest National Park and Volcanoes National Park. Gereses, golden monkeys, chimpanzees and mountain gorillas live there.
Nyungwe Park is located in the south of the country. I definitely recommend traveling by helicopter, the flight over beautiful areas lasts 30-40 minutes. The journey by car, even though it is only 200 kilometers, takes as much as 6 hours. Rwanda's roads, although in good condition, are congested, with many trucks traveling at a breakneck speed of 30 km/h. However, the southbound route from Kigali to Nyungwe passes numerous villages and tea fields, which makes even the long journey pleasant.
After arriving at Kigali airport, we went to the lovely The Retreat hotel where, after a very good dinner, we spent the night. The next morning we went to the city center to see the Genocide Memorial. Being there and listening to the guide's account was a memorable experience.
After a short tour of Kigali, we headed to Nyungwe. We were very warmly welcomed by the local Intore dancers group. Their traditional dance can also be admired during your stay at One&Only Nyungwe House. Dancers with small shields and spears, symbolizing ancient battle equipment, in wigs styled like a lion's mane, and gracefully moving women with baskets to carry goods on their heads - this can only be seen in Africa!
One&Only Nyungwe House offers 22 rooms and suites. Each guest has an infinity pool and an intimate but well-equipped spa using cosmetics from the renowned Africology brand. The hotel is located among tea fields, where tea tasting is organized - tasting different types of tea. You can see tea leaves being picked and learn the correct way to brew tea (it turns out I've been doing it wrong all my life!).
The price of your stay at O&O Nyungwe House includes all meals and laundry services. The biggest attractions include expeditions in search of colobus monkeys and Chimp Trek, i.e. many hours of exhausting trekking in the jungle. Its goal is to meet chimpanzees who eat breakfast around 7 a.m. and then disappear into the treetops, where they rest after eating and build nests.
It takes approximately 40 minutes to reach the meeting point for the Colubus Monkeys Trek to Nyungwe National Park. The guide and driver know from the monkey rangers where the animals are at any given time. We set off into a dense jungle, where the guide cuts a path between the bushes with a huge machete. After walking for a while, we heard them, 20 meters above our heads. Gerezes were jumping from branch to branch, and there were dozens of them! The animals moved "in the clouds", stopping only to snack or to dig out unwanted intruders from each other's mane. It looks like a monkey spa in the treetops. We spend about an hour with the monkeys, we walk through the dense jungle beneath them, which is a unique opportunity to take unique videos and photos.
After returning to the hotel, we take our trekking shoes and clothes to the laundry to be prepared for the next day, and then we can relax in the spa, try our hand at archery or javelin throwing, or ride around the area on electric bikes.
The next day, the departure for the expedition took place at 4.45 am, because it takes about two hours to reach the Nyungwe National Park, where chimpanzee families live. Fortunately, the guides have indestructible Toyota Land Cruisers, because we are traveling through a real wilderness. Nyungwe National Park is a pristine rainforest, many of the paths are quite muddy and steep. To find chimpanzees that do not have a permanent lair, you often have to deviate from the path and go through thick bushes. Porters help people overcome these obstacles and carry their backpacks.
After two hours of intense walking, we heard the smell of fresh fruit, which meant that in front of us was a family of chimpanzees fresh from breakfast. We found them high in the trees building a nest. They came down one by one, looking for more fruit, because they spend most of their time resting in the nest, which they build only for one day. An adult chimpanzee is up to 160 centimeters tall and weighs up to 60 kilograms, but is often twice as strong as the strongest men. These primates are fascinating to watch: they cleverly use sticks and other hastily made tools to build nests or crack harder fruit. When they feel threatened, they often use large branches as clubs.
We spent nearly an hour and a half with the chimpanzees, sitting in a clearing, enjoying a simple meal and taking a moment to rest. The journey back to the meeting point village took about two hours. The drivers waiting there took us to the One&Only hotel. The expedition lasts, depending on where the animals are staying, from 6 to 10 hours (including transfers) and is intended for people who are physically active on a daily basis and have no problems with walking.
The next day we went again to Nyungwe National Park, to the Canopy Walk, where we walked on bridges hanging over precipices. It took about 40 minutes to reach the bridges along the prepared path. The longest bridge is almost 200 meters long and is suspended over 50 meters above the ground, above the treetops. Something fabulous. And at the hotel we had a visit to the spa.
After a wonderful breakfast in a place with a beautiful view of the dense, wild jungle, we went to the second One&Only hotel, located in the Volcanoes National Park. The journey from the south to the north of the country took about six hours.
The landscape gradually changed because Volcanoes National Park is located higher than the park we previously visited, from 2600 to 3600 m above sea level. Tea fields slowly gave way to eucalyptus and bamboo forests. You won't find chimpanzees in this park, but probably the most important species of primates for many - mountain gorillas.
At One&Only Gorillas Nest we were also greeted by smiling faces and Intore performing the dance with small, subtle differences due to the different region of the country. The hotel lobby is very impressive. Sculptures and other elements depicting magnificent gorillas are ubiquitous (in One&Only Nyungwe House, many decorative elements symbolized chimpanzees). The common denominator for both hotels is the use of local art and crafts for decoration. Including: way hotels support local people. Moreover, before One&Only Gorillas Nest was built, Kerzner, the owner of the O&O brand, contributed to the construction of a school, which enabled children to receive education and provided jobs for adults in the newly opened facility.
Gorillas Nest is located in a eucalyptus forest; the trees reach a height of 30 meters! The hotel was built on beautiful grounds and opened just before the end of 2019. As is often the case with hotels in Africa, all meals, drinks, laundry and more (except spa treatments) are included in the price of your stay.
Each of the 20 apartments is a house built on stilts. As a child, I dreamed of a treehouse and I finally managed to spend a few nights in one. It was similar, but equipped with the latest equipment, it had a huge terrace, a gigantic bathroom with a bathtub, three large mirrors, a shower, a heated floor, a living room with a sofa and a fireplace activated by a remote control, and a very comfortable double bed. Of course, I had a fully equipped minibar at my disposal, as well as Dyson equipment in the bathroom and other amenities used in the most luxurious hotels in the world.
The first day after arrival there was time to relax before we had dinner at Jack Hannah Cottage, the only building on the grounds of the 80s hotel, which once belonged to the famous zookeeper of the same name, best known for his fight to save the gorillas in Rwanda. The next day we went in search of golden monkeys. We trained with a local guide at Volcanoes National Park Headquarters in Kinigi, a 15-minute drive from the One&Only Hotel. We came across golden monkeys after a 25-minute relaxing walk, and there were over a hundred of them! They jumped nimbly from bamboo to bamboo, every now and then breaking a new branch and eating…. These adorable monkeys do basically nothing else: when they're not making mischief, rolling around on the ground and pretending to fight, they're jumping from branch to branch and eating bamboo shoots. They are the size of a large cat and are so familiar with people that you have to be really careful not to step on any of them. We spent about 45 minutes with the monkeys, then we walked to the car that took us to the hotel.
After relaxing for a while, we went to The Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey. Ellen DeGeneres is a famous American screenwriter and actress, winner of, among others, Emma. Dian Fossey deserves a much longer paragraph. She is an American zoologist and primatologist, specialist in ethology, pioneer of research on mountain gorillas. She started working in the 60s in the Congo, but had to leave due to the civil war. From Congo she went to Rwanda, where she opened the Karisoke Research Center, a research center dealing with gorillas. In the meantime, she wrote a doctoral thesis in zoology, which she defended at the University of Cambridge in the 70s. When Dian arrived in Africa, mountain gorillas were close to extinction, mainly due to the activities of poachers. Gorilla paws were once a "hot commodity" and served as amulets to protect against evil spirits. The Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey presents Dian's private diaries and descriptions of her favorite gorillas, with whom she often spent time. There you will also find a lot of interesting information about the behavior of these wonderful animals, descriptions of gorilla families and places where they have been spotted on an interactive map. The gorillas are not marked, daily reports are prepared by trackers working in the national park.
A movie night was organized especially for us. I recommend it to every One&Only Gorillas Nest guest. We were all engrossed in watching Gorillas in the Mist, a movie from the 80s that told Dian's story. The next day, like this wonderful person, we were supposed to admire gorillas in their natural habitat.
Wake up in the morning and have breakfast. Transfer to Kinigi, another training - we found out which gorilla family we would observe. Families are "assigned" depending on their place of stay. For people who are less physically fit, families living closer to the starting point are chosen; we, who accepted the medium difficulty level, had more than 2 hours of hiking ahead of us through deep mud and thick bushes.
It's finally here. Igish family. 34 mountain gorillas, one of the largest families in Volcanoes National Park: 10 females, 6 silverbacks (adult males, including one alpha male), blackback (male 8–12 years old), 3 young females, 3 children and as many as 11 babies.
Honestly, I don't really know how to put my impressions into words. It was the greatest experience of my life so far, greater than seeing the rainforests of Costa Rica, greater than climbing a five-thousander in Kenya, greater than tracking rhinos in Zimbabwe, greater than a helicopter flight over Victoria Falls.
There were dozens, dozens of them there. Some were playing in the clearing in front of us, some were falling from the bamboos a meter away from us. Mothers entertained their babies, silverbacks knocked over huge bamboos as if they were matches, and the primate sat 15 meters away from us, watching the entire group with a watchful eye, without emotion. It's amazing how the behavior of the gorilla family resembles humans, how close they are. This is one of those moments when you wish time would stop. We spent an hour in this extraordinary scenery. The smartphone was enough to take sharp photos, we were lucky to get so close. Gorillas inspire respect, but not fear. We just sat there and watched the young ones clumsily climb the bamboos and watch their antics with a smile on our faces.
These impressions were certainly intensified by six days of preparations - a visit to the Foundation. Dian Fossey, seeing the movie "Gorillas in the Mist", etc. During the last dinner, we exchanged observations and had lively discussions about the events of the whole week. No meal has tasted this good in a long time.
The next day, goodbye to Rwanda. Unfortunately. We received wonderful souvenirs from the One&Only Gorillas Nest Hotel: plush gorillas, walking sticks similar to those used during trekking, but richly decorated and disassembled into three parts to fit in a suitcase. Only in Africa did I have the opportunity to meet such kind, smiling and grateful people. Africa was, is and will be my favorite part of the world.
Author: Maksymilian Mazur
