This morning there is much excitement as we are trekking with the rare mountain gorillas of Uganda and Rwanda. We have come to Rwanda for the experience. We got picked up at 7am and headed to the park headquarters where a number of other tourists were also waiting to see which family they would be visiting. There are 18 gorilla families and only 8 people are allowed to spend a maximum of 1 hour with each family each day. Trackers head out at 6am and spend the day with the family; this means that when the tourists set off the guides know where we are heading. The trackers stay with the family until they nest in the evening so that they know where to find them in the morning. I chose to go in the long walk group and we were seeking the Susa family which is the largest family with 37 gorillas.

We set off and had an hours walk through farm land before reaching the edge of the park. The walk was along the edge of fields and in rocky gullies. I found it easy enough, however a few people in our group struggled with the consistent incline and the altitude. We did only take the hour to get to the edge of the park, so we were not delayed too much by slow walkers. When we got to the park edge our trackers were there - we didn't really know what that meant, however we soon discovered that meant that the gorillas were less than 5 minutes from us! The family had moved down lower than normal and we would not have to trek through the thick forest which is full of stinging nettles and other unpleasant creatures and plants - whilst it would have been nice to do some forest trekking, I think the amount we did was just fine.

We had to leave all of our bags and just take our cameras. If you sneeze or cough with the gorillas you had to be really careful to move away from them, cover your mouth and try not to infect them. Our visit went without incidence on the potential infection front. After walking into the forest we literally had 2 gorilla's in our sites in the first 5 minutes. Gorillas eat, sleep and move during the day and are vegetarian so were unconcerned with us just hanging out. The guides thankfully speak gorilla and kept making a sound like they were clearing their throat which apparently in gorilla means a combination of: it is ok; we are friends; welcome. For our whole visit you could hear this noise from both the guides and the gorillas. One gorilla walked past our tracker and gave him a bit of a shove, but he was not concerned. We were told that we would be at least 7m from the gorillas at all times but this was in reality about 2 - 3 metres for the duration of the visit. It was amazing to be standing that close to these wild animals in their natural habitat. The guides were also really good at ensuring everyone got to have a good location to see and making sure that people in front crouched down etc. We had a few instances where the gorillas decided to move about and we all had to shuffle back or around. We were in thick vegetation which did make moving a little hard at points, however our guides had machete's to cut out a path if the vegetation was too resistant to our moving. The Susa family has a 1 month old baby and a set of twins who are 1 year old. The silverback, who is the ruler of the family was absolutely massive and his fingers were about the width of my ankles! I am glad that he was happy we were visiting as he could have done a lot of damage had he not been happy.

Ordered a t'shirt to make sure that I remember this truly amazing experience. The added bonus is that it adds another option to my currently very limited wardrobe.