Andreas was planning to visit from Cairo over the long Easter weekend. “Hey,” I said. “Let’s go to Rwanda!” What better place for a weekend getaway?

If you haven’t been there, Rwanda would likely surprise you. It is a beautiful country with friendly people and a fast-developing economy.

90% of Rwanda’s population are farmers, but the tourism sector is growing rapidly, and the biggest attraction is the gorillas. These are the mountain gorillas studied by the famous primatologist Dian Fossey.  They live up in the misty Virunga mountains, a chain of volcanoes near where Rwanda, Uganda, and Congo meet.

You can visit them in any of those three countries, but Rwanda is where Fossey studied them, and it so happens that the airport in the capital city of Kigali is only a couple of hours from Volcanoes National Park.

I am going to skip right ahead now to the good part because I think you are probably here for the gorillas. I will do a separate post later about other stuff we did in on our quick visit to Rwanda.

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If you want to know more about these wonderful but endangered creatures, take a look at:

Virunga – film about people fighting to protect the mountain gorillas in the Congo; Oscar-nominated for best documentary film in 2015

Gorillas in the Mist -1988 film based on Dian Fossey’s autobiographical book, starring Sigourney Weaver

Gorilla Doctors – Animal Planet documentary about the vets who help keep the wild mountain gorillas healthy

And if you want to go to Rwanda and see them for yourself, I highly recommend Bizidanny Tours and Safaris.