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Mountain Gorilla View Lodge or Mountain Gorilla Lodge/Kigali Serena Hotel

Spend three days in the Volcanoes National Park which includes one full day of gorilla tracking, followed by one night in Kigali where you can enjoy a city tour and perhaps visit the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre.

Day 1: Virunga National Park

Today you arrive in Rwanda, where you will be met at the Gregoire Kayibanda International Airport and taken to a nearby hotel for welcome drinks and a briefing.  After lunch, travel north to Ruhengeri and the Volcanoes National Park.  This two hour drive undulates over Rwanda's extremely hilly and picturesque countryside, and as you near the end of your journey, you will (weather permitting) begin to catch glimpses of the Virungas, a chain of 9 impossibly steep and lofty volcanoes straddling the western branch of the Rift Valley from east to west.

Each mountain possesses its own unique character and silhouette, but together they form one of the most isolated and visually dramatic ecosystems in the world.  A "true island in the sky", the Virunga National Park was Africa's first, and it was granted status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979.  The park is home to some of the worlds' few remaining Mountain Gorillas, which were first studied here in 1959 by George Schaller, and later by Dian Fossey and her colleagues.

Check into your lodge for the night. Your accommodation is on a dinner, bed and breakfast basis.

Day 2: Virunga National Park 2

Today's activities may be amongst the most exciting and challenging you have undertaken.  The Mountain Gorillas in Rwanda are part of a worldwide population of just 720 individuals.  The gorillas we are allowed to track belong to either one of seven habituated family groups.  For up to five years each, these groups have undergone an extremely delicate process that has gradually brought them to tolerate the presence of humans for a brief period every day and allowed a few privileged visitors to interact with them in the wild.

After breakfast, head off to the park headquarters at Kinigi to register and have our gorilla family for today allocated to us.  Once this is done, set out by vehicle to the start of the tracking point where we meet up with our guides and porters to begin the track.

The gorillas are by no means tame, and are completely wild animals.  However, experienced guides will accompany you on your tracking, many of whom have been involved in the habituation process themselves.  The guides will use their knowledge of the gorillas' habits and information from the previous day to locate the group's whereabouts.

Because of this, the time taken to track the gorillas varies enormously, from as little as half an hour to as much as 9 hours before one returns to camp.  Once the gorillas are located, our group will be allowed a maximum of one hour with them.   This is one of the world's truly memorable experiences; a look into one of these magnificent creature's eyes brings home the bond that exists between them and us.  It also brings home the poignant fact that they are on the edge of extinction, and that our presence here contributes to ensuring their continued survival.  The hour is often over all too quickly, and we slowly make our way back to the lodge to recount the day's adventures.

Travel back to Kigali in the afternoon. Accommodation tonight is on a full board basis.

Day 3: Depart

This morning, we take a city tour of Kigali, and for those who wish to, there is the opportunity to visit the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre.  The centre in Kigali was created by a joint partnership between the Kigali City Council and the UK based Aegis Trust.  It contains a permanent and extremely moving exhibition of the Rwandan genocide and an exhibition of other genocides from around the world.  Rest of the day at leisure to prepare for your flight out.