Getting Up closer to Rwanda Mountain Gorillas involves planning for your Rwanda gorilla trek experience to the voluminous compacted juingle, with your ranger, you trek these noble giants. There are only 880 of this species of gorilla left in the world — that’s one gorilla for every nine million people — and they are all located in the volcanic region of central Africa that bleeds across Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. About half are in this 272 sq km of rainforest, one of the most bio-diverse regions on earth. To protect the gorillas, the forest was turned into a National Park in 1991, which means you cannot get close to them without purchasing a $700 permit, Getting Up closer to Rwanda Mountain Gorillas

You are only allowed to enter the jungle in groups of eight or fewer, not including the porters and guides, and your time with the gorillas is limited to one hour. That’s assuming you can find them. There are trackers who monitor their movements 24/7 and communicate with the guides via walkie-talkie, but it’s impossible to second-guess their whereabouts from one day to the next. Some gorilla tourists don’t emerge from the forest until after midnight, having set off at 8.30am. So we were lucky to come across the group we were Gorilla Trekking in Volcanoes National Park after only two hours. Having said that, we had been hiking up a steep gradient at high altitude in heavy rain through some of the thickest vegetation I have ever seen. Our guides had to clear a path through it with machetes, and calling it a ‘path’ is misleading —it was still strewn with brambles and nettles.