The rules are that we are to stay at least 7 meters (about 25 feet) away from a gorilla. That didn’t work out today, because the gorillas had no problem just walking up and past our group members. Here’s one with a fellow tourist.

Here is a little gorilla with the mother not far to the right.

Wood is tasty! Gorillas must have tremendous teeth.

Here is a wonderful face on a four day old baby gorilla.

Here is another baby, about two months old.

This is a very expressive face.

Here is a close up of an adult’s foot.

This is the volcano closest to our our lodge, Mt Sabyinyo 12,000 feet (3,600 meters) high. The two gorilla groups we’ve seen are in the direction of the volcano.

The next morning we reported back to the park headquarters to be assigned to a Golden Monkey group. There were about 18 or so tourists in our group. Same routine as with the gorillas—drive to starting point, meet porters and ranger, walk into the forest.

Golden monkeys live in bamboo forests and move quite fast. A lot of photos were taken, but most turned out blurry and underexposed. But some are good.

Here’s a Golden Monkey early in the trek. 

We had the same rule about remaining 7 meters away from a monkey, but given how fast they moved, it wasn’t possible to adhere to the rule. As demonstrated here.

This one has a nice face.

We were back at camp again by lunch, packed up and our guide drove us to Musanza to look at a market, and then on to Kigali for an overnight flight to Amsterdam, with a change of crew in Entebbe, Uganda. Before leaving the lodge, our friends gave us a great, locally–made present—a tin replica of a safari truck.

Here is the flight path; total distance of 9,625 miles/15,490 km.

After having seen the Sabyinyo Group of Mountain Gorillas, we went out the next day to see a different group. We also are going to look at Golden Monkeys before leaving the National Park.

Next—Home via Kigali, Entebbe and Amsterdam.

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