HIS EYES were dark pools staring at me through a veil of bamboo. His movements were slow and graceful a startling contrast to his four-hundred-pound frame. It is not everyday one comes face to face with a silverback gorilla. There are no bars. No cages. No signs or lights. Just you. Just him.
             Beyond the clearing we were able to make out the other members of his group. Two females hovered over a young baby, cradled snugly within its mother’s arms as if she was singing a lullaby. A young male swung lazily from the vines of a giant hagenia tree before lying back on the ground for a grooming with his female counterpart. It was just another day in Rwanda’s Parc National des Volcans on the border of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and I was merely a quiet observer watching a fraction of the world’s remaining 650 mountain gorillas.
              There were eight of us and it had not been an easy, four hours of hiking and scrambling through large thornbushes, navigating through slushy mud and dense tropical forest.  Rwandan laws required that a maximum group of eight only spend one hour with the primates, keeping a minimum distance of eight yards between you and the gorilla. Every cough and whisper had to be muffled and covered with your hand. A small price to pay when face to face with beings so human in their mannerisms that it is almost impossible not to feel as if you have stepped back in time to watch your own evolution.
             Encounters with the tremendous creatures are remarkably nonaggressive. The first in depth studies began on the volcanic slopes with George Schaller and more recently with Dian Fossey.
             While one would expect poaching and deforestation to be responsible for threatening the species, it is actually the presence of ecotourists that have broken the magnificent primates. Despite sharing 98% of our DNA they are unable to survive in captivity, making the one hour you spend with these spectacular creatures in the lush forests of Rwanda all the more valuable.
              Only four of the gorilla families living in the 31,000 acre Parc National des Volcans are tolerant of humans. The remaining groups live deeper in the jungle and tend to move rapidly away from sound of approaching tourists. Typically the park will only issue eighteen permits a day so as not to stress the more tolerant families.
              The three contiguous national parks – Volcans, Mgahinga in Uganda, and the DRC’s Virunga, all within the Virunga Conservation Area – are home to approximately 360 mountain gorillas. The remainder live north in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, prompting debate as to whether these two populations are of the same subspecies or distantly related.
              The Rwandan Park National Des Volcans ranges in altitude from 7,900 feet to 15,000 feet and is dominated by a chain of seven volcanoes, the highest, Karisimbi, more than 4500m. Rumored to be one of the most beautiful sites in Africa, Rwanda boasts more than seventy mammal species, well over three hundred species of birds and more than seventy types of vegetation including the giant lobelia and senecio plants increasingly threatened by the neighboring farmlands that surround it.
              Bookings for gorilla permits can be made through the ORTPN tourist office in Kigali or a Rwandan tour company. The departure point for all visits is the ORTPN office Ruhengeri.

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