Kibumba Tented Camp

Mist settles most mornings on the forested flank of Mount Mikeno, and the camp sits inside that cloud line, close enough to the volcano's lower slopes that the gorilla families denning there are a short trek away. Kibumba Tented Camp has 18 tents in the traditional safari style, each with its own bathroom, hot water and a flush toilet rather than the bucket-and-basin setup common at simpler camps. It is a working base, not a resort. The main building holds a restaurant, a bar and Wi-Fi, useful given how little else in the way of signal exists on this side of Virunga National Park. Days start early. Rangers brief guests before the trek into gorilla territory on Mikeno's lower reaches, and the walk in can run for hours through wet forest before the first sighting. Between treks there is time for nature walks and birding; the park's bird count runs into the hundreds of species, more than found in far larger countries. The camp's setting inside Africa's oldest national park means every stay is bound up with the rangers' daily work protecting the mountain gorillas and the forest around them. Evenings are quiet, the tents lit against the dark, the volcano somewhere above in the cloud.