Gorilla Trekking in Rwanda's 🇷🇼 Volcanoes National Park

It's a good morning from Volcanoes National Park. We're just at the visitor center here. We're registering and we're just going to get the briefing ready for our gorilla trekking. There's so many people here. There's so many cars coming in, dropping people off, but we need to get registered first and then have a briefing. Then we'll make our way to the start point. You can see the volcanoes in the background. Really amazing place to come and visit. Scenery here is incredible. We're just waiting for our driver to get us registered and then we'll be on our way. Okay, we've done the briefing and we're ready to trek on to the start point. Fingers crossed it's an easy trek. We've been told it was, so that's what we're looking for, especially after yesterday, but anyway we'll see how it goes. So these are eucalyptus. They're planted a lot, so close to the gorillas. I told you they eat the bamboo. They have in the forest about 200 different species of plants. They just decide what they're going to eat as a family. Maybe we get there when they're eating, then we are going to see. Sometimes you get to see gorillas outside. They're coming for eucalyptus. They like the sap. They remove the bark and then sprout to get the sap coming out. It's more like a dessert. It's small amounts they're collecting. This is one of the mountains we have here. We have a chain of five volcanoes and this one is called Bisoke. It has a very beautiful crater lake at the summit. Then we get tourists to hike this one a lot, just to get to the crater and then next on the left is where we have the highest volcano which is called We have a gorilla called Karisimbi in this family. We get to name the gorillas. Every September they give names to the newborn. These names are the ones our trackers and our monitoring teams are using for the individual monitoring. If one is sick, then they know who is sick. They have different marks on the top of the nose. When we get there, you make sure you check the nose prints so that I don't take you around and tell you this is the second one and yet it's the previous one. There will be a place that we arrange where we're going to be dropping our sticks. The back of the spot where we need to have a sip of water or we can quickly have a bite because we'll be spending one hour around the gorillas. You may see someone taking a picture they know what's going on. They know they're not like our pets. No one brings a camera that our gorillas' reaction is always like, you try to bring people closer to see then they're like, they're like go away. Then tourists with the cameras, yeah they continue eating, they look up and they just continue their activities because they know there are friendly people around them. We ask you to stay 10 meters away and they don't know about it. It can happen so it will depend on their movement. It happens when they come to us then we have no room. Instead of running away, I'll ask you to just stay still especially like silverbacks or boys. Then I would quickly ask you please stay low then they will pass by. So it happens that they are this close and baby gorillas they do the same. They can try to do that, they come like this then they run, they can try to kick or slap because they're just playing. I mean here like you already mentioned when they're not happy they're wanting you to stay away. If you're coming your way they can do that then you would know it's been coming to you. That means you need to get out of the way or they can just wait because they don't expect you to know their language. You can make eye contact with these animals. It would be no problem making eye contact with them until they're aggressive. When I see some signs of aggression I quickly ask you now we are going to avoid eye contact but also we'll be in this position. You will hear a sound that is more like when you hear the gorillas sounding like that that means everything is fine. They're very happy. So we are going to go and try to see these animals before the rain. Quick little pit stop before we trek on. Yeah I almost made it into the men's room. I thought we were about to murder someone. One false move you could be over in a big thicket of stinging nettles. I think we're actually quite close to the gorillas now which is amazing. So we're trekking in this quite dense kind of bush it's full of stinging nettles so you need to be very careful. Pretty heavy going but nothing too serious. Amazing. Miracle. What's it called? Rebellia. Rebellia. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Through. Where are they? They're hiding. I think here he's been interested in eating the roots because this is one of the plants that are eaten by the gorillas like the whole thing. They don't as you can see they ate only the roots and then left the rest. When they are interested in it like the stem. It's pretty sharp. Thorns. They eat the leaves. Then these are not healthy to eat to be eaten by the gorillas. They have choice. They can go and find a better one but when they are leaves they will go like this. Already upside down and then they can eat the leaves more like this. And then they go for this one when they are thirsty because this one contains it contains a lot of water even with ayu. You see.