Today was one of the most anticipated days on our trip. We added an extra 3 nights onto our trip in order to spend just one hour with the Mountain Gorillas of Rwanda.

We arrived in Kigali and were driven to the Sabinyo Silverback Lodge. The lodge was beautiful and we were given a huge cottage with a lounge and open fireplace, which was great, given the weather is quite cool here and gets very cold at night.

The next morning we left at 6:30 to go to our meeting point. There are several families of gorillas in the Volcanoes National Park and you need to buy a permit for US$750 (which has since increased to US$1,500) per person. They only issue enough permits per day to allow for 8 people per gorilla family. They then assess your fitness (by looking at you) and assign you to a group. Your fitness level determines whether you are allocated to a family that is an easy hike through the jungle, a medium hike, or a hard hike. They never told us which category we fit into, but our hike was easy going in and then got very challenging once we were following our family of gorillas.

We were allocated to a family of 18 gorillas called the Hirwa family, which means "lucky". This family consists of one silverback, one black-back (which is a young silverback) and a stack of females, adolescents and babies, including one set of 6 year old twins. We were very excited about this because 18 is a large family. There are families of 3 that we could have been allocated to, so this increased our chances of some great viewing with so many more gorillas in the group.

We set off in our landcruiser to drive to the hiking point for our family, driving for 20 minutes on another typical African "road". The excitement of seeing the gorillas made it much more bearable and also driving through the local villages where the kids would all run out shouting hello and waving as we went past.

When we reached the hiking point, we were allocated 2 porters to carry our backpacks. Emmy and Jack were our porters and were very attentive throughout the hike, holding Lidia's hand for most of it to help her across the more difficult terrain.

The hike started off easy enough, walking through muddy fields of potatoes and pyrethrum up a slight incline. After about half an hour we reached a bamboo forest, so the terrain changed markedly. It was still a relatively easy hike, although traversing a creek over a very slippery bamboo bridge with no railings was pretty challenging. It is also 2,500 metres above sea level so the air is quite thin and it doesn't take much to feel breathless.

On the way we saw a giant earthworm, which was massive. The guide picked it up and showed it to us. It was the size of a small snake.

After another hour, we reached a thick jungle and as soon as we got there we were met by four trackers. These guys basically follow the gorillas around 24 hours a day and radio to our guides as to where they are, so as soon as I saw them I knew we must be close to the gorillas.

We walked around a few trees and right in front of us was the silverback of the group, just sitting under a tree. We walked right up to him, maybe 6 to 8 feet away and he totally ignored us. Our guides were making grunting sounds, which in gorilla language mean hello in a non-threatening way and apparently this calms them.

From this point on, there were gorillas everywhere you looked. There was an adolescent chasing a baby around, a small fella doing acrobatics in a tree in front of us, a mother with two of her offspring cuddling and a mother with a two week old baby.

The gorillas started moving down the side of a huge hill and I was standing next to the lead guide. Everyone else was a fair way behind us and the guide started moving down the hill, motioning for me to follow. There was no track and he was hacking through the brush with a machete moving down a very steep slope. The undergrowth was so thick that I couldn't stand on the actual ground, only bushes, so it was a little disconcerting not knowing what was underneath the brush. There could have been a 10 foot drop and you wouldn't know it. The going was super tough and I was trying to hold my camera and keep my balance, with limited success.

We finally made it to the bottom of the hill and I looked up to see the rest of the group starting to fall their way down. The guide went back to help them, but I saw a few gorillas hanging around so went by myself to take some photos. There was a mother with a very small baby just sitting in a clearing and I took some awesome shots of the baby before anyone else got there.

When the rest of the group finally caught up, they followed the mother and baby, which had started to move off. The baby jumped onto its mothers back and was performing for us, rolling upside down and being very cute.

I had had enough pictures of the baby, so I hung back from the group because I had seen some bushes moving as another gorilla moved down the hill. One of the guides stayed back with me and he started walking towards the rustling bushes. He pulled the bushes aside and the black-back was sitting there eating bamboo shoots. This gorilla was massive, easily 150 to 200 kilos with huge, powerful arms and a high-domed head. He didn't take too kindly to the guide disturbing him and lunged over the bushes straight at the guide. The guide sprang back towards me and the gorilla lost interest and moved off to the right. I lost a couple of years off my life, I'm sure!

The guide was super persistent though, and followed the gorilla to where he was now sitting. He had to walk within a couple of feet of him to get past him so that he was standing in front of him again, and he did that and then turned and motioned for me to follow. I looked at him with my best "You've got to be friggen kidding me" look, but he kept motioning saying it was OK, so I bit the bullet and followed, looking at this massive gorilla only two feet away from me with my best "Please don't kill me!" look on my face. Fortunately, he totally ignored me and I went and stood next to the guide right in front of this behemoth.

There were a couple of branches in front of the gorilla's face, so the guide reached forward to clear them and as he did this, the gorilla leapt over the bush and physically shoved the guide, sending him flying into the bushes. I was now one foot away from him and it took exactly one nano-second for me to turn and high-tail it out of there, tripping over undergrowth on my way. This took another 10 years off my life! I thought my heart was going to beat right out of my chest.

We stayed with the gorillas for another 10 minutes or so and then our hour was up so we hiked out of the forest and drove back to our lodge.

All in all, a once in a lifetime experience which we would recommend to anyone.