The view across from my balcony at Bisate Lodge, a cluster of luxurious, nest-like villas vertiginously built into the side of a former potato farm, appeared just before daylight.
I had waited for it in darkness, cradling a cup of Rwandan-grown coffee, and it was breathtaking. Ringed by a halo of clouds was the inverted cone of Mount Bisoke, one of five extinct volcanoes in the Rwanda portion of the Virunga Massif that make up Volcanoes National Park. In these densely forested peaks, extending into Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, many of the planet’s remaining wild mountain gorillas—there are only 1,064 in all—make their home. And in less than an hour, I would be heading into the mist to spend an hour with them.
