The hike to the golden monkeys will take you for about 45 minutes through farmland from the road to the park boundary, which is a 6 foot high rock wall, aimed at keeping wild animals like buffalo and elephants out of the farmland abutting up against the boundary.You will also be accompanied by two armed park ranger escorts to protect the group from a chance encounter with a buffalo or forest elephant. Rwanda is quite small country with a sizable population of about 11 million which means land is fully used up, primarily for farming. Once inside the park you walk for another 30 minutes through quite slick and steep terrain. The walk to the golden monkeys depends on where the monkeys are hanging out that day but you'll generally find them in tall bamboo sections of the forest. Usually a team of trackers is sent out ahead of time to find the actual location of the golden monkeys, so that when you arrive at the park boundary your guides knows roughly where they were headed.
When you reach the spot where the guides thinks they are, you will watch up at the bamboo and see them. You will see them playing, jumping from bamboo to bamboo trees. They have soft and fluffy looking hair on their cheeks which make them look like they always have a mouth full of food. They seem completely at ease among people, going about their everyday activities. In the sunny clearing you could rotate in a circle and see monkeys at every point of your turn. Interestingly they feed on stinging nettle, which if you've ever encountered some in the forest know it is covered in spikes that come off in your skin if you brush up against it. Don't know how they do it. We all began our trek back reluctantly, but understandably as the rangers explained the animals are happiest if they have only limited exposure to humans.
