Explore Volcanoes National Park Rwanda : Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda is the mountain gorilla hub of the country, harboring over 100 species in the Virunga conservation area. This park is one of four in the East African region that has the famous and endangered mountain gorillas. Actually, if you hear about Rwanda for the first time you will learn about the genocide and the mountain gorillas in Volcanoes National Park.
Volcanoes National Park is found in the northwestern part of Rwanda about 2 to 4 hours from the country’s capital Kigali. The park sits of 160 square kilometers area of a rainforest within the Virunga conservation area. The park’s Virunga conservation area has 5 of the 8 virunga mountains that are Bisoke, Muhabura, Karisimbi, Sabyinyo and Gahinga.
Founded in 1925 this old national park, one of the oldest in Africa used to be a base for the famous and fallen primatologist Dian Fossey’s research on gorillas. Of course, because the park is a home to the mountain gorillas.
The volcanoes National Park borders two other Virunga conservation area forests which are Mgahinga National Park in Uganda and Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In fact, in years past the gorillas from mgahinga used to cross to Volcanoes and vice versa. There haven’t reports of these movements in the recent years.
We shall talk about the mountain gorillas in the park in a bit but the park is also home to other mammals like black-fronted duiker, African buffalo, spotted hyena and harnessed bushbuck. It is also having bird species up to 200 currently with the famous ones being the endemic Virunga and Albertine region.
In 1992, the park activities were halted by the Rwanda civil war, stopping all tourist activity until 1999, when restoration of the country activities was picking up. During the halting of activities, the dian fossey primate center was also closed.
Volcanoes National Park has other attractions within its limits which are the Buhanga Eco-Park and Musanze Caves. The Buhanga Eco-Park contains Rwanda’s most interesting folklore characterized with woodland all around. The Musanze Caves on the other hand are volcanic explosions that came after the last volcanoes mountain eruption over 60 million years ago.
This park is a mountain gorilla habitat is an assortment of a montane forest, Arundinaria alpina forest, Neoboutonia forest and Hagenia-Hypericum forest. The park’s vegetation varies from savannah to lush bushes, swamps, thickets, meadows, grasslands, marsh vegetation because of the park’s large altitudinal range.
In the future Rwanda development board plans to expand this park from 13,000 hectares to 23,000 hectares on this expansion 10,000 hectares will for park activities and 6,260 hectares a buffer zone used for agroforestry to support the park activities and the surrounding communities. The main purpose of this expanding is to reduce human-wildlife conflicts and promote more conservation of the animals in the park.
The park receives visitors or tourists daily who come to the park to see and experience these big and rare primates the mountain gorillas. Visitors to the park get to experience the mountain gorillas on the mountain gorilla trekking experiences that happen all year round in the park.
The mountain gorilla experience in Volcanoes National park usually takes about 4 to 6 hours or more depending on which part of the mountainous forest you are trekking and which mountain gorilla family you are trekking. At the time of writing this family, this park is known to have about 10 mountain gorilla families living in the different areas of the mountainous forest.
On your trek, you are usually up by 6am to prepare and have breakfast. Then you have a briefing at the park headquarters at about 7am, after the briefing you and your groupmates and the trekking ranger will now go into the forest to search for these mountain gorillas
You will spend most of your time trekking and the one hour in the presence of the gorillas looking at them, taking pictures and just enjoying their company. There after you will vacate the f0rest and head back to your other day activities.
After the mountain gorilla trekking activity that is the main one you do in this park, you can also go on and do other activities like the community tours, cultural village tour. On another day you can try out hiking and the dian fossey center trek.
