All negative and our gorilla trek is on. Wayne’s boot has been repaired and we are good to go again. Roger to the rescue and Benjamin even helped put Wayne’s boot on for him!!! Back at the park headquarters we went through the protocols and Roger was off to find us a guide and a gorilla trek. Seems to involve a lot of haggling and discussion. I enjoyed a cappuccino one last time – this was our final trek before heading back to Kigali and on to Tanzania.

We had a single traveler from Durban join our group and our guide was Patrick. He did a briefing and let us know we would be meeting the Hirwa gorilla troop. They were a family of 15 with 2 silverbacks, Nwisange was the leader and there were twin boys and a 4-month-old Mugwira and a 1 year old Iratuje. The policy at the park is to always send you on a trek to a different group and generally in slightly different terrain and area. We headed off and within 30 minutes we had reached the start of the trek. Hired our porters and off we went. This trek was very different, it went through farmland then a bamboo forest. We saw the beehives, farmers in their fields and the backdrop of Sabyinyo volcano. Very enchanting and gentler trek than our first gorilla trek. Glenn and I welcomed that, our legs were hurting from the Mount Bisoke hike. Patrick stopped regularly to educate us on the terrain, gorilla families and other bits of general information. As always, encountered red ants and had to dash across their path as they get in everywhere if you give them a chance.

We were surprised to meet the park ranger soon after entering the bamboo forest. The Hirwa troop was close by. We left all our belongings behind and headed off to meet them. On this occasion we walked on the vegetation with the gorillas – quite an experience and you had to be careful or your leg disappeared into the vegetation. Met the adolescents and females first. The adolescents were quite playful and mischievous. One beat his chest, snarled, and did a mock charge towards Wayne who leapt out of the way and almost knocked me over. Made for quite an adrenalin rush… Soon we saw Mugwira with Mom, lovely to see their interaction. Then Iratuje showed up and proceeded to entertain us, playing, and getting close out of curiosity. We had to keep moving backwards because the silverback could charge us if he felt Iratuje was in danger. We got to see them eating and stripping the vegetation, so cool. Our 1 hour flew by and soon we had to head back to our porters and gear.

This was a not a very long trek, 3.4km’s round trip and about 1 hour 8 minutes of hiking. On the way back we saw the “dreadlock” sheep and the Angel flower – beautiful but toxic! Such a wonderful experience all round.