Gorilla Warfare in Rwanda

The trek

Photo by Marcel Muller

The year I came to Karisoke, 510 visitors made the trek, a total round-trip distance of 5.65 miles. The Rwanda park authority allows three to four hours for the hike but I did it much faster, mostly because I was the only tourist to do it that day (in fact, that entire week) so we went at my pace. Actually we went at the pace of my fast-moving guide, Fidel, who took me at my word when I said I was a fast walker. He took off like a shot and didn’t look back. Fortunately the rifle-toting guards – one in front, one behind — offered me a hand when the trail became slippery with mud or loose stones.

First we passed fields of corn and potatoes and pyrethrum daisies, the latter commercialized as a natural insecticide. Then we clambered over a stone wall, into the forest and the beginning of the steep ascent. Up an old buffalo trail (same one used by Fossey and her crew, and later by the movie crew who filmed on site), getting steeper, stones, rocks, gravel, tree trunks, then out into sunny patches with high vegetation on each side, including stinging nettles. I had my rubber gloves for those, but because the initial part of the trail was in the hot sun, I didn’t put the gloves on till it became necessary.

Then another stone wall separating community land from the national park, and finally the muddy, cool, canopied thick jungle. It wasn’t as tough as Machu Picchu on Day Two, but definitely tougher than the gorilla trek I’d done the day before. At a certain point I gasped, “Are we about halfway?” The guide reassured me, “Yes, we are about halfway” . . . a few minutes before a tilted sign announcing that we were entering Karisoke Research Center came into view.

The location is a beautiful meadow between the Karisimbi and Visoke volcanoes (hence the name) with the Mikeno volcano in the distance.

Aside the cemetery, there is almost nothing to SEE at the site except signs: Fossey’s first cabin was here. The research director’s cabin was here. The workers ate here, slept here, played soccer here. An open-walled thatched hut contains displays that serve as the sole repository of information about this place. The few traces of the original center are overgrown with plants, vines, and grasses. The only identifiable site is the cemetery where Fossey and her favored primates – as well as others who came after 1985 – are buried.