Had an awesome experience visiting the Gorillas this morning.

It was an early rise (5 am) to get up make a pack lunch and eat breakfast before being collected by our jeep to take us to the Volcano National Park and the start of our Mountain Gorilla trek.

Our driver was DJ Kevin, and he entertained us with his music that he said was him on his CDs. One was quite a good song which he said was about the genocide in Rwanda and saying that don't worry if you don't have parents or family any more just trust in God.

After a 30 minute drive we were at the park and had an hour or so standing around and waiting for the game wardens to finish their briefing.

Our warden was called Fidel and Papi, and we were off to visit the Armadio group which means peace. They had 16 family members including a silverback (president) and vice president and 5 babies. After showing us photos and telling us about the gorillas we set off for another hours drive.

From there we then walked through farm land (potatoes), until we reached the stone wall which marked the edge of the park.

Then it was another hour and a half walking before reaching the gorillas. We had to leave our bags with the trackers as the gorillas might be attracted to the food.

But the first site of them was amazing. We were so close to them (maybe 2 metres) and our first site was of two adults play fighting and 2 babies playing together.

We then spent an unforgetable hour moving amongst the different groups and visiting each of the 16 members of the group. They move around as they eat and play or in the case of the president silverback just laze around.

One of the large adults gave one of the members a little pat on the shoulder and then pulled a guide down the mountain a bit. It was a bit scary at first but since the guides were all laughing we knew it was nothing to be concered with.

It was an amazing experience and one that I will never forget.