You will wake early for breakfast and be taken to the park headquarters where you will have a briefing from your gorilla-tracking team at 8am about the rules of the park, and what to do and what not to do when you meet up with the gorillas. Then head off with your group through the foothills and higher-altitude forest—ensure you have strong shoes, wet-weather gear and a stout walking stick. As the gorilla family sleeps in a different place every night and travels through the day, pausing occasionally to eat and rest, you’ll have several guides and trackers to find their location and tracking takes between 2 and 8 hours. But once your group catches up with the mountain gorilla family, all fatigue is immediately forgotten when you discover that you are sitting only a few metres from the gorillas in the undergrowth. You are allotted one hour to observe them, and will perhaps see the babies scrambling up trees, juveniles playing, females grooming each other or feeding their young, or even a giant silverback (dominant male) pounding his chest. After the hour is up, the guide will lead you gently away for the long but exhilarated walk back, and later head back to your lodge and rest. In the evening you can choose to relax at the lodge or take an evening interactive walk with the local Batwa people—the original hunter-gatherer community of the forest and you will have the opportunity to learn how they live and also watch them perform traditional singing and dancing.
- Overnight in Bwindi
- Accommodation at your camp or lodge
- Breakfast, lunch and dinner included
- Drinking water is provided. All other drinks are extra.
Day 3: Bwindi Impenetrable National Park – Volcanoes National Park (105 km, 2 – 3 hours)
From your lodge at Bwindi, we drive to Kisoro and cross the Uganda-Rwanda border to Ruhengeri in Rwanda. Ruhengeri is a town in northern Rwanda’s Musanze district and serves as the base for gorilla-tracking in Volcanoes National Park (Parc National des Volcans),home to Rwanda’s share of the mountain gorillas. It covers 160-sq-km and protects the high-altitude cloud forests on the soaring slopes of five of the eight volcanoes in the Virunga Volcanoes, and it’s easy to see why Rwanda is also known as ‘a country of a thousand hills’. The drive is very scenic, and we arrive at your camp/lodge in the late afternoon or early evening. You can stroll around the lodge or relax and take in the panoramic sunset over the volcanoes, and over dinner prepare for your second exciting gorilla-tracking excursion early the next morning.
- Overnight in Ruhengeri
- Accommodation at your camp or lodge
- Breakfast, lunch and dinner included
- Drinking water is provided. All other drinks are extra.
Day 4: Gorilla tracking in Volcanoes National Park
Embark on your gorilla-tracking excursion in Volcanoes National Park and the drill is much the same as at Bwindi and begins with a briefing at the park gate with your group and tracking team. Although like Bwindi the hike is physically demanding, it is not often as strenuous as Uganda thanks to better-laid out trails and more clearings in the forest, and the trek is typically much shorter. Again it is a wonderful and memorable experience to sit with the gorillas in their natural habitat, and you will discover that the gorillas are just as interested in their human visitors and will stare curiously back and it is a spine-tingling hour. If the gorilla-tracking ends early enough, in the afternoon youcan relax at the camp/lodge or go for a walk in the villages surrounding the park and interact with local people. Alternatively take an optional excursion to the lively Ruhengeri Market, which is especially renowned for its colourful fresh produce and beautifully-designed Rwandan fabrics.
- Overnight in Ruhengeri
- Accommodation at your camp or lodge
- Breakfast, lunch and dinner included
- Drinking water is provided. All other drinks are extra.
Day 5: Volcanoes National Park – Kigali (110 km, 2 – 3 hours)
After your leisurely morning breakfast reminiscing about your amazing double experience of seeing the mountain gorillas in two countries, depart Ruhengeri for the pleasant drive through the foothills of the volcanoes back to Kigali. Once there we drive you around on a short city tour through the bustling neighborhoods for an authentic taste of Kigali life. In the afternoon we transfer to the airport or to your Kigali city hotel.
- No accommodation; this is the last day
- Breakfast & lunch (dinner not included)
- Drinking water is provided. All other drinks are extra
