We trekked to see the Amahoro group of gorillas on Chrismas Day, 2006.

There were 5 other hikers in our group including two young women from Montreal (who were wearing velour track suits and one was wearing driving moccasins with no socks), a man from Ireland and his friend from Moscow who had a very strenuous hike to the Susa group the day before and a guy from the US Embassy. I only mention the Montreal outfits because as I stood there in my nettle-proof shroud and kick-ass hiking boots, I was concerned that they were going to have a difficult time keeping up.

In addition to the group of 7 tourists, we had two guides as we headed out from the ORPTN park office headquarters at 7:30am. Once we turned of the main tarmac road, the drive to the trailhead was very, very bumpy and muddy. The guy from the Embassy (who was driving his own vehicle) kept getting stuck and at one point had to be pulled out by the Volcanoes Safari vehicle at the front of our convoy. This was quite entertaining for the local villagers who came running from all over the place to see the stuck mazungus (this is the Kinyarwando word for "white people" and the children would wave and yell "mazungu" whenever we drove by). Many tried to speak to us in French, although one harmless fellow who came up and said (in English) "Hello, my name is John <pause> Give me some money¨.

Our guide, Patience, gave us a pre-trek briefing	We passed many traditional dwellings on our way to the trailhead	And then the road became essentially impassible.

We finally reached the trailhead around 9am and hired a porter (Andre). With one bag we really didn't need one but figured that it was money well spent (and these guys need the work - only one other person hired a porter, so six went away without work for the day). We were instructed to tuck our pants legs into our socks, I thought this was because of ants but it was because of the mud. Our entourage now included armed guards and trackers too, so our group was up to around 15.

Armed guards protect the gorillas from poachers	This was the first gorilla that we saw - point of the picture is to show that there's no path leading anywhere and we still have a few 100 yards to go, most of which is straight up.	And our very important trackers and porters

The first part of the trek was through flat farmland, complete with chickens and goats and children waving hello. The ground felt hollow - I still don't know why because it seemed like too complicated of a question to ask (with the language issues) and I was ready to see some apes!

The weather was fairly clear, so we had a great view of the surrounding volcanoes. We reached the stone fence that indicated the park border and took turns awkwardly climbing over. Patience explained basic gorilla etiquette and also guaranteed that we would see the gorillas today. This was excellent news since everything leading to this point had included the disclaimer of "we do not guarantee wildlife sightings" and "the gorillas do not work for the park" etc. As one of the women from Montreal climbed over, she asked me to hold her iPod. now I'm not entirely clear why you would want to deprive yourself of the sounds of the forest, but they were actually the fastest hikers and were staying out of my way for photo purposes so I really didn't care.

Once we were in the dense bamboo forest it was noticeably warmer. In the forest, we hiked for less than an hour but some parts involved stooping over to climb under overgrown bamboo and other parts were straight up and pretty slippery. We reached a small clearing and saw more trackers so I knew the gorillas must be near. As we were gathering our cameras, we saw our first gorilla about 100 yards up the mountain. It was pure forest at this point so I had no idea how we were going to proceed, but into the forest we went. As we pulled ourselves up through the bamboo, there was a baby gorilla playing in the canopy above us - then we noticed another gorilla to our right. We were so busy watching the first one (in very dense vegetation - exactly the conditions that I was expecting) that I didn't even notice a larger one with a baby out in the open to the right! We stayed and watched for a few minutes, but then Patience told us to continue on and we moved along the ridge. In a few minutes we came upon a clearing (remember, we're on the side of a mountain here) and saw the second silverback and about six others with a few juveniles. We were so close to the second silverback that we could hear him snort and fart! Patience and the trackers kept making throat-clearing noises to let the gorillas know that we meant no harm, and from their reaction, they could care less that we were there. We watched the 13 year old second silverback (whom they call Kajoliti) for a long time. He is missing his left hand "due to poachers". This just makes me sick. They said the most recent poaching incident in PNV was two years ago. (Though poaching in the Congo continues frequently.).

The trackers and Patience hacked a path down into the nettle thicket and said that we could go down one by one to get pictures of the second silverback from a different angle. He rolled over a bit as I descended and I now had a perfect front-on view of him from about 10 feet away. Between the noise of the trackers, the bird noises (we saw a Rwandese Trogan), and the gorilla noises, it was complete sensory overload.

We took turns taking pictures of each other with the gorillas in the background and soon Patience announced that the hour was up. You are only allowed to stay with the gorillas for an hour to avoid stress to the animals, and that seemed short when we were paying the permit fees months ago ($375/person/trek for non-Rwandans, going up to $500 in June of 2007). Now that I've been, an hour seems fair, (though I could have stayed in that nettle patch all day).