Rwenzori Mountains National Park

Overview

The Rwenzori are not volcanoes but a block of ancient rock pushed up along the Albertine Rift, and they carry the third-highest peak in Africa: Margherita, at 5,109 metres on Mount Stanley. Unlike Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya, the summit is a glaciated technical climb requiring rope and crampons, but the trek to the high camps needs none of that. What makes the Rwenzori extraordinary is the vegetation. Between 3,000 and 4,500 metres the mountains hold an Afro-alpine zone of a scale found nowhere else - giant groundsels five metres tall, tree heathers hung with lichen, lobelias, everlasting flowers and permanently sodden bogs, all under near-constant mist. Ptolemy's Mountains of the Moon, the supposed source of the Nile, are these. The central circuit takes seven to nine days and is genuinely wet and muddy; the Kilembe route on the southern side is drier and quieter. Rwenzori turaco, three-horned chameleons and the Rwenzori duiker live in the forest below.