Woke up at 5:00 a.m. this morning to pack. Now I'm getting in a plane, a little
bush plane, and I'm gonna take that to Kigali. Next stop is gorilla trekking.
Should be interesting. What better place to visit mountain gorillas then where
Dian Fossey studied them? Welcome to Rwanda, or as the locals say,
Ronda. The reason I am in Ronda is to trek gorillas. No matter what Lodge you stay
at, you wake up early in the morning, you drive to the meeting spot, then you tell
them which physicality you want to be at. Some of the gorillas are on tougher hikes.
Which you might have to hike two or three hours to get to and some of them,
you might see as soon as 10 minutes.
Once you're assigned your family, you get back in your car and you
drive to the starting point of your particular hike. This is my guide Odeo.
Now we met our porters, they carry our bags, then we'll head off towards the mountain.
The adventure begins.
Now we're hiking up to the bottom of the volcano. Supposed to be about 10 minutes
and our guide called the trekkers to find out where the gorillas are so we
can go trek them.
We just left the lush green fields and all the crops
and now we're heading into the forest with all the trees. Should be a good little
trek to find them. They're saying a few hours. Welcome to the forest. It's starting to
get real. Trekking gorillas day one. We're gonna hike for a good couple hours and
hopefully find some gorillas.
Ok, I'm very close to the gorillas right now. We have to be quiet.
This is just incredible. The alpha male is over my shoulder to my left.
oh wow, oh, what's he doing? Ah, that face, that face is beautiful.
This is so exciting. I'm kinda geeking out.
Mountain gorillas are herbivores and eat 40 plus pounds of
vegetation each day. The males weigh between 300 and 400 pounds and the females
weigh 150 to 200 pounds.
If you know me, then you know I wanted a challenging hike, so they assigned me
to the Susa family and what's cool about that gorilla family, is it's one of the
originals that Dian Fossey studied way back in the day. So cool.
There's a special naming ceremony to celebrate newborn baby gorillas each year. This is
to promote and create awareness for the protection of the gorillas.
I got my stick, got on my rain jacket, got on my boots, got on my gaitors. Day -2 trekking gorillas
starts now. I love it when the kids wave.
Isn't it beautiful here?
Okay, trekking gorillas
I'm starting to see trees move of where the gorillas are in them. I love this.
As we were walking
up, I couldn't believe it. They're these massive, gorgeous
creatures with this long dark beautiful fur and it felt like they just let us right
into their world
When I asked the guide, he told me the Silverbacks eat before the black backs
We're all the same when it rains, you just wanna cover up and hide a lil.
Sad to say goodbye to the gorillas, but what an experience. I was
up-close-and-personal with a silverback. Blew my mind.