Day 1:

We arrived in Kigali airport and went to find our airport transfer to our hostel... there was no sign of it. We waited for a while and rang Absolute Africa who had arranged it for advice and they said that recently they had, had problems with the airport pick ups and just told us to get a taxi ourselves. We managed to find a taxi who knew where our hostel was and eventually arrived in the dark. We were shown to our room which I have to say was not the best and slept in our sleeping bags on top of the bed rather than getting in the bed. In the morning we got up and went exploring to a little shop down the road to buy something to eat and when we were walking down the street everyone was looking at us. In the light of day our hostel was a lovely shade of blue and looked nice from the outside. We asked the owners to book us a taxi to take us to the Genocide Memorial and museum where we would be meeting our tour group at mid day. We arived before the truck was there so had to wait a little while. When it arived the guide Aly said we were early but in actual fact it turned out she hadn't changed her watch to Rwanda time and she was an hour behind! We met everyone on the truck who all seemed really nice, put our bags on, had some lunch and borded the truck to head to Ruhengeri for our gorilla trek the next day.

Days 2-3:

Oh my gosh!! What a day! Trekking up a mountain to 3500m was not an easy task at all. There were 8 of us in our group with our guide Placide. First we had to trek up rocky grassland and through farmers fields for about an hour. The slowest person had to go at the front to set the pace for the others, can you guess who that was? YES ME!! It was really hard work, up hill the whole time in the hot sunshine. Eventually we came to a wall which was the edge of the rainforest. The forest was covered with stinging nettles so as we walked we were constantly getting stung. The ground was very muddy and squelchy in places, sometimes going right over our boots and up our trousers. Again it was up hill all the way but I had got used to it now and it didnt seem as hard and someone else had to go in front as I was no longer the slowest! After about two hours of climbing over branches and over rocks we reached the place where the gorillas were. AT LAST!!

I first saw a female gorilla eating in the bush on her own. When she saw us she got up and walked to join the other gorillas, she walked straight past me practically stepping on my foot! Then we saw the silver back male, he had his back to us for awhile but then he turned around to give us a really good look at him. He kept growling and the guides kept growling back, they said they were telling the gorilla that we had come in peace. There were also some babies one holding on to its mothers back who again walked straight past us and some slightly older babbies that were play fighting and rolling around on the floor. It was amazing how close we got to them and they didnt seem to mind us being there at all. The hour that we were allowed to spend with them went by quite quickly and it was time to start our three hour trek back down the mountain.

Going down was alot easier than going up, however there were some scary bits as we had to get down some really steep bits and the mud was so slippery. Needless to say I ended up on my bottom a few times!! After a very long trip down we were all so pleased to see the wall but that meant we still had another hours walk left through the fields.

It was a very tiring but amazing day.