The big highlight for Rwanda was seeing the gorilla's. Jamie arrive in Kigali on the Friday and headed straight for the Tourist Board to hopefully book a trek up for the Sunday as I was arriving on Saturday evening. Unfortunately the news was not good, they only had 1 ticket left and were fully booked until the end of August and suggested one of us sees the chimpanzee's and the other the gorilla's. Jamie explained that was not an option and he would wait around in the hopes that someone cancelled or they could perhaps somehow get us another ticket. Just as Jamie was about to give up, Betty came running out of the office shouting "I have one, I have one - you can both go to see the gorilla's!" Great work Betty!!

That night after I arrived at the airport we drove to the town of Kinigi which is close to the Volcans National Park where we would meet the next day for the trek. We stayed at the Mountain Gorilla's Nest Hotel and received our wake up call at 5.30 am the next morning. After getting in a good breakfast, as you never know how long the hike may be, we headed of the the park's headquarters where we registered and were then allocated a group. We were asked if we wanted to see the Susa group, not knowing to much about the individual groups we agreed that would be fine - all we wanted to see were the gorilla's and did not mind about which group. To our surprise we were going to see the largest of the groups of gorilla's and also the group which has successfully reared twins who are now aged 4. We could not believe our luck, but this meant however that we may have to walk for a long time to reach them.

The group of maximum 8 people is allocated a guide and when everyone is ready you drive for approximately an hour until you reach the parking before hiking for an hour and a half to reach the forest edge on the mountain. At this stage the guide communicates with the trekkers who have been looking for the gorilla's before we arrive, who confirm that they have located them and how far away they are. We get told that we have to hike another hour and a half to meet them - well what are we waiting for let's get going! The guide keeps receiving updates from the trekkers and after about an hour we stop and are told that the gorilla's are moving down the mountain to us so we have to get our camera's out, leave our bags with the trekkers and porters as we walk a few minutes further to meet the gorilla's. As we start off again we can hear them communicating with each other and as we head out of from the trees we see an opening where they are sitting and eating!

It is truly a sight and experience that no words could every explain. They are such amazing creatures and the hour you get to spend with this is just mind blowing. In no time at all the memory card for the camera was full and we had to put in the second one, the video camera was hardly switched off as we were granted the amazing opportunity to see gorilla's in their natural habitat doing what they do naturally. We were truly lucky and blessed to be able to get tickets at the last minute and will never forget the amazing hour we had with a small group of the 400 odd gorilla's that are left in the world!