Gorillas in the Mist
TRAVELLERS are once again making their way to the beautiful bamboo and rainforest-covered slopes of this volcano-crowded national park in Rwanda's northwest, after authorities undid the hefty official chain and padlock that had prevented access up until mid-1999. The park had been closed for several years prior to this because of fighting in the area between government troops and soldiers of the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front. The upper environs of some of the area's seven volcanoes are apparently still occupied by fugitive Hutu militias and inestimable quantities of unexploded ordnance, so, unfortunately, hitting any of the many spectacular climbing trails is not an option at this time.
But for most visitors that's OK, because what is currently accessible (thanks to the security provided by a military post) is the large, hirsute creature that most of them have come here to see.
The mountain gorillas of East Africa are now thought to number barely 600 and are distributed throughout national parks along the shared borders of Rwanda, Uganda (Bwindi and Mgahinga national parks) and Congo (Zaïre). There are four groups of the primates that can be visited with the help of guides in the Parc Nacional des Volcans, most of them on the slopes of a volcano called Visoke.
