What is the difference between mountain gorilla tracking and trekking? Many circumstances where people have confused gorilla tracking and trekking though the two have a small difference. Gorilla trekking is when tourists are led by a national park ranger guide in search for mountain gorillas in thick forests which act as their habitats. This activity requires hiking so it needs one to be physically fit as gorillas stay on high elevations of Virunga Volcanoes in Uganda, DR Congo, Rwanda and Bwindi impenetrable forest national park

Mountain Gorilla trekking

Gorilla trekking is when visitors go into the dense thick tropical rainforests of Bwindi impenetrable forest national park, Volcanoes national park, Mgahinga Gorilla Park and Virunga national park to look for mountain gorillas with the help of well experienced guides. The terrains in Bwindi, Mgahinga, Virunga and volcanoes national are the same, made up of thick tropical rainforests and bamboo which means that the experience is the same in all national parks. The variations are very small, based on the steepness of some parks of the mountains of Virunga massif and hills.

Gorilla trekking usually begins early morning at 7:45, the guests must wake up early to take morning breakfast and head to the respective briefing centers where they are taught about the do’s and don’ts during gorilla trekking after which they will be allocated a gorilla family to track, with a maximum number of people allowed to trek a particular gorilla family being 8. Time taken to allocate an assigned gorilla family depends on several factors ranging from terrain, movement of gorilla families, season, strength and skill of travelers among others.

However it’s an amazing experience when you finally meet the mountain gorillas no matter how long the trek has been. You are given only 1 hour to observe mountain gorillas, learn their behaviors, take photos and record live videos. In this given period you are allowed to ask guides any information you want to know about these gentle giants.

Mountain Gorilla tracking

Gorilla tracking is done by well-trained national park ranger guides, park staff and researchers. This activity involves tracking down a specific habituated gorilla family and allocating them basing on their last known location, where they slept the previous night and the feeding area.  Gorilla trackers do this activity for a number of reasons i.e. researchers do the gorilla tracking for population census, research purposes while rangers do track mountain gorillas to make sure that visitors who come to see these giant apes get to see them and in fact there are 99% chances of seeing mountain gorillas in the parks despite the fact that gorillas are very mobile and go to different locations everyday with in the same parks. Gorilla tracking is the same across the different gorilla tracking national parks of Uganda which are Mgahinga gorilla national park, Bwindi impenetrable forest national park, Virunga national park of DR Congo and volcanoes national park of Rwanda.

Difficulty of mountain gorilla trekking

Different travelers have different preferences of how difficult they want to the gorilla trek to be, some prefer long hikes of adventure through thick tropical forests, and others prefer shorter hikes while others like short hikes because of age and fitness. At Africa Adventure Vacations, we make such that we find out what the guest wants right from the time send us an inquiry to the time they book a gorilla trekking tour. We help guests to choose the best sector to ensure that they get their best out of their gorilla trek basing in their preferences. We can also talk to the park rangers to allocate you a group of your choice during trekking.

Gorilla trekking can be done in volcanoes national park Rwanda, Virunga national park DR Congo, and for the case of Uganda Bwindi impenetrable and Mgahinga national parks. In Uganda gorilla trekking is $700, Rwanda its $1500 and $450 in DR Congo per person per trek.

Mountain gorillas are the biggest living primates surviving in the world. They are divided into 2 different species of western gorillas and east gorillas. These species are further sub divided into eastern low land gorillas, western lowland gorillas, river gorillas and mountain gorillas.