Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park - Waterfall Trail

The trail with the possibility of seeing gorillas is the longest trail in the park. It goes to the Ivi river and is 13km roundtrip. We wanted to get started early at 7am and so arranged the trek on saturday afternoon for sunday morning. The permits for entering the park are valid for 24 hours and if we entered the park on saturday at 2pm we would have a valid permit till 2pm sunday. This way we could get 2 hikes into the park for the same entry fee, just paying another $10 to do the waterfall hike. After lunch Laszlo and I went to the park for 2pm. We joined 2 South Africans. We had our guide Ben and a mandatory armed escort. Bwindi hit the headlines in 1998 when 8 tourists tracking gorillas were kidnapped and killed by rebels from Congo since Bwindi sits on the border with the DRCongo. Since then security has really been stepped up, a little too late for some though I think. The trail started out along an old logging road that hasn't been used since 1991. It was fairly easy hiking until we entered into the proper forest. The trail got thinner and steeper as we got close to the waterfall. The views of the forest got better. The forest along the road was very dense and hard to see into but now it opened up.
Bwindi is one of Uganda's newest national parks but has been a protected area for decades. It was declared a world heritage site in 1994. Bwindi has one of the richest floras and faunas of any forest in Africa. The 331 sq km park is all steep mountains and valleys with lush rainforest draped over them. Besides mountain gorillas there are also chimpanzees, black and white colobus, red tailed monkeys, l'hoest monkeys, baboons, duikers, giant forest hogs and forest elephants. Though besides primates, many other animals are rarely seen. I have wanted to explore Bwindi ever since I bought a coffee table called Tropical Rainforest almost 10 years ago. It had 6 chapters, each about a different rainforest area of the world. Bwindi and Borneo really stuck out as the ones I wanted to visit first.
The waterfalls consisted of 3 levels, the highest fall being 30m but I didn't find any of them that impressive. I did really like the setting they were in though. The forest is dripping with epiphytes and moss on everything. Tree ferns, some of the oldest living 'fossil' plants, abounded. It was another clear day with blue skies.
I ate dinner at the local place and went to bed early but not before I arranged breakfast for the following morning at 6.30am. I got up at 6.30 and was ready but apparently breakfast wasn't. It didn't come till almost 7, but I didn't care that much. 10 minutes late starting our hike isn't a big difference. Laszlo and I got to the park at 7.10 and met our guide from yesterday, Ben and our armed escort. We were ready to begin the Ivi river trail.