Traveling to Africa is one of the best experience one will ever have due to the amazing wonders you encounter during a safari, before thinking about traveling to Africa, I was inspired by my colleague who has ever moved to Africa with Nature Adventure Africa Safaris Limited a tour company based in Uganda that had earlier organized his trip. After a nice recommendation from Henry my friend, I developed interest in traveling to Rwanda and Uganda for gorilla trekking.
This prompted me to contact the company via both telephone and email addresses; this made my work easy since I was replied within 24hours irrespective of time variance between Uganda and America.
We engaged in several discussions concerning my travel and the itinerary plus all the costs I was to incur during the course of the safari. Within few days I was sent an itinerary where I was to do double gorilla trekking from the volcanoes national park and Mgahinga Gorilla National park.
Despite of the fact that the prices in Rwanda were a bit high I was more enthusiastic with my adventure safaris. I paid a gorilla trekking safari permit from the volcanoes national park in Rwanda at $1500 and for Uganda at $600 and other costs before my safari.
This enabled Moses to arrange for me a successful trip, in this case I had to contact my other two colleagues who were also interested in traveling with me for a wonderful journey, Moses included them and provided us with a final budget.
Our trip was to last for four days in both the two countries and our first destination was Rwanda, on our first day we arrived in the evening hours and on this day, we couldn’t do any activity, we were picked from the airport in a 4X4 Land cruiser vehicle by the Nsubuga who was our guide, he took us to the hotel where we spend the overnight.
Early in the morning at around 4am after a warm tea from the hotel, we embarked in our vehicle and we kicked off a 2hours journey to the northwestern province where volcanoes national park is located.
We reached in time and this enabled us to join other visitors in a briefing from the park rangers, in this case we tracked the Susa gorilla group which is found around river Susa from which it derives its name.
This is among the most common groups within this park and it is well known for research purposes, it’s this group which was first studied by Diane Fossey. This group is located in the higher altitudes of the mountains and therefore requires being physically fit.
By the time we started our trek it did not give us any difficulty since the first rangers had gone there earlier and they communicated to our guides and this enabled us to use limited time.
This took us 4hours within the forest and in the presence of the gorillas; we were given one hour to enjoy what brought us. This group has got 28 individuals within the family with three silver backs and the twin gorillas of Impano and Byishimo.
After this trek we were taken to Mount Gahinga Lodge from where we slept as we prepared for the second gorilla trek from a different nation, climate and time zone and this is Uganda.
Good enough these two countries border one another and this enabled us enjoy the trip as we dint move a lot. On the third day we had to go straight to the park head quarters for another briefing before 8am, this was so interesting as we came to know more about gorilla behaviors.
Mgahinga national park is truly where gold meets silver, this is Uganda’s smallest national park that protects the three out of eight extinct volcanoes including Sabyinyo, Gahinga and the Muhavura mountains.
The park is covered with a tropical type of forest with a mixture of bamboo and varied vegetation types as one goes higher, the only gorilla group that has dominated this park is the Nyakagezi group which has stayed here and being tracked for a number of years.
This was an amazing journey as we started tracking deeply in the forest, we overcame rifts and valleys including ridges as we followed the different trails within that led us to the group, this was another experience as we were fed with enough information as we witnessed the jokes of the gorillas with the silver back being the leader of the family.
This exhibit its power as the head of the family by deciding where they should go, stay, sleep, it has got the powers to take a lion’s share from all the food staffs hunted plus being the first to feed and also protecting the entire group.
This took us 4hours and by we also spent 1hour with these gentle creatures and after we went back to the park headquarters where we received our certificate of appreciation, we couldn’t expect this but it was a nice experience since our safari went on well without any inconvenience and on the fourth day we crossed the border to Rwanda up to the airport since our flight was scheduled for evening.
We couldn’t believe that it was the real services provided by Nature Adventure Africa Safaris Limited that made us enjoy our safari and we look forward to travel back for another adventure.
