The routine was the same as yesterday but less rushed as we left 10 minutes later as the sign in for the golden monkey trek is less pressured than for the gorillas.
We had an excellent female guide and two 2 month trainee guides who were still very young and studying tourism in school.
The group was large, 16 of us - predominantly American, two Australians, a Spaniard and us. This guide importantly explained the value to the local economy of hiring a porter so most people took one - consequently there were lots of smiling faces amongst the porters as most had work today.
This is the easiest activity the park offers a flatish walk to the forest boundary and for us it was very short as once inside the park boundary the golden monkeys were only 5 minutes away - eating bamboo and leaping from tree to tree.
Eventually near the end of our hour some came to the ground and you could have stepped on them as they appeared silently from everywhere and sat eating bamboo! Apparently when the bamboo is shooting they ( and the gorillas ) get quite high on the hydro carbonates - monkey alcohol - but it's actually the extra sugars in the shoots.
There was lots to watch as these very interesting rare monkeys went about their daily business - we even saw the crèche - several youngsters with one female babysitter. Needless to say the hour whizzed by.
They reminded me of the bamboo lemurs we saw in Madagascar.
We were back in the lodge by 11am which compensated for yesterday's long day.
The rest of the day we relaxed, sorted out photos - which were hard to take due to the light in the bamboo forest.
I booked a massage for 5pm so we ordered a fire in the lodge at 4pm then for the rest of the evening, including just as we were going to bed we had a trail of men with wood wanting to keep the fire going for us.
With that and our boots being returned clean (a free service) and the hot water bottles arriving it was a busy time at the door!