Volcanoes National Park

Volcanoes National Park is Rwanda's share of the Virunga massif — a hundred and sixty square kilometres of bamboo, hagenia and moor on the slopes of five volcanoes that stand in a line along the borders with Congo and Uganda: Karisimbi, the highest at four thousand five hundred and seven metres, Bisoke with its crater lake, Sabyinyo whose summit is three countries at once, Gahinga and Muhabura — and it is where the mountain gorilla was studied, saved and shown to the world. Dian Fossey founded Karisoke in the saddle between Karisimbi and Bisoke in 1967 and is buried there beside Digit; the film made of her life sent the first tourists up the trails; today a dozen habituated families receive eight visitors each per morning, briefed at seven at the park headquarters in Kinigi, and each September the year's newborns are named at Kwita Izina before a crowd. The park also has the golden monkeys of the bamboo, the climbs of Bisoke and Karisimbi, the twin lakes Burera and Ruhondo below, and Musanze, the town fifteen kilometres down the hill, with its lava caves and its markets; Kigali is two and a half hours by the road of a thousand hills.

The traveller comes up from Kigali the afternoon before and sleeps near Kinigi, because the briefing is at seven: the assignment to a family by fitness and wish, the drive to the trailhead, the walk up through the potato fields and the stone wall into the forest — an hour, or four —, and the hour with the gorillas that the guides count to the minute; the afternoon for the Iby'Iwacu cultural village or the caves; the second morning for the golden monkeys, whose hour is louder and cheaper, or the Fossey trail to Karisoke and the graves; the third, for those with legs, the Bisoke crater lake, six hours there and back, or the two-day Karisimbi; and, always, the view at dusk from the lodge terrace of five volcanoes going violet.

The Guide's honesty: Rwanda has priced the gorillas as the treasure they are — the permit is fifteen hundred dollars, and the park's lodges follow suit, though Musanze has honest rooms —; the rules are exact — masks, seven metres, no visit with a cold, no flash — and are the reason the families are still there; the ground is steep and slippery and a porter is dignity, not weakness; the country is clean, safe and orderly to a degree that surprises, and its memory is close, which the traveller who has visited Kigali's memorial understands; and the hour, when a silverback turns and looks, is beyond price, which is why the Guide sets this page next to Bwindi's and calls them, together, the mountain's heart.