He's still a gorilla
on Rose Hardman (Rwanda), 22/Dec/2010 09:10, 34 days ago
Pete’s flight arrived as planned as did the driver to take us up to Ruhengeri. After a couple of days of thinking we wouldn’t get to see the gorillas and would lost $750 it was the best things ever to see Pete and then the driver, Gerrard, arrive. As it only takes two hours to get to Ruhengeri we stayed in the airport for a couple of hours eating biscuits and drinking coffee. I would have preferred to go straight up to Ruhengeri (I wasn’t taking any more risks after the excitement of the previous two days) but Gerrard did not pick up my hints, nor when I was a little more blunt, so we waiteduntil we were instructed to leave. To be honest he was probably right as it was much more pleasant sitting there than it would have been sitting in the car for three hours in Ruhengeri.Pete was understandably shattered but he was at the point of tiredness where you can’t sleep and the road to Ruhengeri was so bumpy that he wasn’t able to sleep on the way up to the Gorillas. It was great to be able to show him Rwanda as the sun came up and we climbed into the hills of the North. Gerrard took us to get breakfast when we arrived in Ruhengeri and we met a lovelygirl who was travelling round East Africa. We then headed to see the gorillas. We went to see the Hirwa group of gorillas. We travelled to the base with our guide and an intern who was learning to be a guide. They were lovely. The trek wasn’t too hard (luckily as we were so tired we couldn’t have managed much more!) We probably walked for about two hours to find the gorillas. I can’t really describe how amazing it was to see them so I’ll just post some photos and hope they speak for themselves.TrekkingView of volcanoesFirst glimpse of a GorillaFirst glimpse of the SilverbackSilverbackSilverbackSilverback GorillaGrumpy GorillaHungry GorillaNot a gorillaWe were staying at Roisin’s house in Ruhengeri. As she was in Zanzibar for Christmas we met her friend Jemma who gave us the keys. By this point, Pete was white as a sheet and could barely stand he was so tired. We went back and he rested for the rest of the day before we headed out for pizza. It wasn’t quite like PizzaExpress but Pete was suitably impressed!