I crawled out of bed at 3.45 am pie-eyed and slightly delirious after the crazy events of the previous 24 hours – we’d travelled across 3 countries, addressed a National Cricket Team and then ran high octane coaching sessions for over 350 kids across two schools in a country we were not supposed to be in.
Armed with a nice pillow and Ed’s swanky new headphones the plan was to eat into my serious sleep deficit accumulated since we left Uganda, but as we drove through the streets of Kigali it was very clear that sleep was not going to happen. Kigali is alive even at 4am and as the sun came up it revealed the majestic landscape of the Rwanda countryside with the mountains of the Volcanoes National Park towering in the distance. I was travelling solo as the rest of the team had already done this trip a few years back, it had only been made possible for me due to the great efforts of Booths Travel Agents who had organised the whole thing at 6pm the night before. I put on the headphones, looked out the window and tried to process the previous few days and the fact that I was now en-route to do one of the things very high up on my Bucket list.
After coffee on arrival at the National Park, and now dressed in a very fetching pair of rented gaitors, our group of five tourists were soon trampling through the forest with the rangers hacking a path at the front with their machetes..
After one hour of hiking we were called to halt by the rangers, looking up we saw the first of a family of 22 gorillas. Another quick scramble and we were stood alongside the mother and two very playful kids. Truly amazing but things went to a different level when a 220kg Silverback emerged from nearby rustling bush and sat himself in front of me barely 3 metres away. What a moment! I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Over the next hour the rest of the family of 22 would reveal themselves. My preconception from watching David Attenborough do this on TV thirty years ago was that we wouldn’t get withing 10 metres of the Gorillas, yet here they were brushing past my leg as they barged past to go and grab more of their daily intake of 30kg of food. It was a magical hour than passed in an instant and my mind was officially blown.
We headed back to the National Park base and grabbed lunch. As we drove home you could quite literally see the tourist dollars from the Gorillas trickling down the Mountain. Lots of Tourist Lodges and an infrastructure even more developed than Kigali itself.
We got back to the hotel at 4pm. The day had only become possible due to the situation in Uganda and the brilliant work done by Booths Travel Services. I’ve always banged on to my Kids that every problem creates opportunity, but this takes the p*ss….
Steve McConnell
