Golden Monkey Trekking - Volcanoes National Park Rwanda - August 25

Today marks the last day of safari and we are up early to track the Golden Monkeys, one of the most endangered primates in Africa. These little known monkeys, which reside only among the Virunga Volcanoes, are very active and playful. They are a local subspecies of the widespread Sykes Monkey, also known as the “Blue Monkey” and they are endemic to the high altitude forests of the Volcanoes National Park area.

There are two habituated groups of Golden Monkeys, one group comprises around 80 - 100 members and has its home at the foot of Mt. Sabyinyo. Unlike the Mountain Gorillas the number of visitors is not limited but visitors are still only allowed to stay for 1 hour with them.

Felecian again brought us hot chocolate, coffee and shortbread cookies as we got ready. We then went to have a full breakfast and got fitted with gaiters. I was having some lower GI issues so I didn't eat much.

We met at the same National Park Headquarters and Callixte Mugiraneza was our Park Ranger/guide and our group was gathered together. They had the same dance troupe there as I suppose they perform daily.

We had a few people from yesterdays’ trek in our group with the addition of the couple from New Zealand and a few others. We drove to a different area to start the trek and again we passed young children and farms and beautiful scenery.

 Callixte Mugiraneza was our Park Ranger/guide

 Rwanda flag

 

 used as natural soap

scarecrow

We had a briefing on the proper behavior around the Golden Monkeys. Flash was permitted and no problem with eye contact or getting too close. You could get pretty close, but of course could not touch them or impede their movements.

 Trackers & Security

 porter

 me crossing the "bridge"

 

It is usually only a short walk to reach them, but as luck would have it, they weren’t where they were supposed to be and we had to walk over an hour to find them. (normally about 15 to 20 minutes) It would not have been a tough walk, but my knee was still not happy and it was slow going for me. The New Zealand couple joked it was longer than their gorilla trek. Way shorter than our gorilla trek, but way longer than their 15 minutes.

We first saw a male who was quite willing to pose for photos. We also watched them feeding on bamboo leaves and shoots. They used the bamboo like a highway as they climbed all around us. They were quite pretty as the sunlight highlighted their coats. One woman using an iPhone to take a picture puts it right in the Monkeys face and the rangers quickly pulled her away.

 2 young ones

 a young one

 

Since it’s supposedly an easy trek we did not hire porters, but because of my knee I was crawling along at the back of the line and one of the porters (hired by another young lady that didn’t need help but he was carrying her backpack) stayed with me and helped me the whole way. At one point we walked through some ants and one of the little devils ended up inside my pants and gaiter and he took off my gaiter and rolled up my pants to get it out of there. Plus because of my GI issues I was moving kind of slow. Needless to say when we got to the bottom, we gave him a big tip since we hadn’t hired him.

Chameleon

 Chameleon with eggs

village at the bottom of the trail

We had a nice lunch at the lodge and then went to shower and pack up (they allow afternoon checkout if you are flying out the same day). Our hosts bid us goodbye and Felician brought down our bags. I don’t know how I managed NOT to get a picture of Thor & Alisa, they were an adorable couple. Here is a photo from their website.

 part of the walkway from the lodge

 

At the bottom of the walkway to the lodge is an office with a guard and this is a chair that would take 4 porters to carry someone up the hill if need be

Our afternoon visit to the culture village will be in the next installment.  I also have stopped uploading videos to the Picasa site as they take forever to upload. I will add them later. IF and WHEN Greg edits some of the videos into something more watchable I'll add them and remove the other ones.