Day 1 - Saturday
We meet our presenter, former Chelsea and England football star Graeme Le Saux, at Nairobi Airport, Kenya and fly with him to Kigali, Rwanda. By some miracle all of the crew's 30 cases of camera and sound equipment (and my suitcase full of woolly hiking socks and WWF T-shirts) arrive too. After meeting our drivers we pop for lunch at the famous Hotel Mille Collines - the setting for the film Hotel Rwanda.

We get our first taste of the African rainy season as we eat lunch by the pool. The weather changes in seconds from hot and sunny to rain so heavy that you could almost swim through it.

We fight through the rain and into cars for the three-hour drive to Kinigi, close to the Volcanoes National Park, where we will encounter the gorillas.

The rain calms down as we leave Kigali, and after two and a half hours of driving through the gorgeous Rwandan countryside we get our first glimpse of the volcanoes. Graeme is stunned and spends a few moments photographing them. We arrive at the Gorillas' Nest Hotel exhausted after 25 hours of travelling, share a couple of beers and go to sleep.

Day 2 - Sunday
We travel to a small village just outside Kinigi, where Graeme is introduced to the family of a park ranger who was killed by poachers as he worked to protect the gorillas.

The family lives in a typical home for this part of Rwanda - made of little more than sticks and mud, and with no water, power or any of the other trappings of the modern world. Graeme spends much of his time with Jean, the 15-year-old son of the family, and learns about life in Rwanda and the difficulty of surviving when the breadwinner has been killed.

Jean's mother is part of an association of widows - set up by the International Gorilla Conservation Programme (IGCP), which is funded by WWF with its partners Fauna and Flora International and the African Wildlife Foundation. The widows work together to survive in this incredibly poor country.
Graeme helps the family to collect water and prepare an evening meal of potatoes and bean-leaves, and has a kick-about with Jean and some friends.

Day 3 - Monday
The day starts at 5am with the crew preparing their equipment for the first trip to see gorillas. Graeme is incredibly excited - as are the rest of us. At 7am we arrive at the headquarters of the Rwandan National Parks authority, where we are given a briefing about how to behave with the gorillas and are introduced to our guide, Anaclet.

After a two-hour drive to the start point of the trek we set off into the forest. We start the climb up Karisimbi - the biggest of Rwanda's volcanoes - in thick bamboo. But as the climb continues we find ourselves in more open forest, with our legs whipped by vicious stinging nettles.

After about two and a half hours of hard trekking, Anaclet points out piles of gorilla pooh and tells us we are near the Susa group - the biggest of the habituated groups of mountain gorillas in the park.
Looking down, we can see a few black outlines in the woods, and can hear loud grunting calls. The crew quickly prepare their equipment and we move down to see the animals. I go with the camera assistant, Sam, and Anaclet's assistant, while the rest of the group splits off. Sam and I are rewarded almost instantly as we turn a corner to find a massive silverback only a couple of metres from us; we set up the camera and start filming. The gorilla seems uninterested in us and sits eating giant celery. There is a female with an infant a few yards behind him.

Then the rest of the group, unaware that we are there, comes wandering towards us. Graeme sees the silverback, and is awed, but the sudden arrival of this bigger group agitates the large male, and as Graeme is talking to the camera, Anaclet announces quietly, but urgently: "He's going to charge!"
As the words leave Anaclet's mouth the massive gorilla beats his chest and powers toward us. We are backed into a copse of wood and stinging nettles, unable to get out of his way, but Anaclet stands between us and the gorilla making gentle grunting noises until it backs off.

Sam and I then follow our guide into a clearing where we are staggered to see about 30 gorillas sitting in the sun eating and playing. The rest of our group soon follow and for the next 45 minutes the crew films these stunning and strangely human creatures just mucking about - with a little bit of mating here and there.

After an hour with the gorillas our time is up, and we have to make our long journey back to the hotel. We are exhausted but totally elated.

Day 4 - Tuesday
Sam and I spend most of the day filming the beautiful countryside and grinding poverty, while Graeme and the rest of the crew travel to an area that less than a decade ago was thick forest, but is now all fields.

It is a cautionary tale, and shows what will happen to the gorilla forest if it is not protected. The IGCP is doing incredible work to protect the gorilla's remaining habitat.

Today The Sun newspaper confirms that it will join us for the last couple of days of the trip, which is fantastic news, but my biggest excitement of the day is finding a particular type of bush that seems always to be full of chameleons.

Day 5 - Wednesday
The crew spend the day in the forest again, visiting Group 13, one of the other large gorilla groups, while I spend the day making arrangements for The Sun. I need to get them permits to come trekking with the gorillas on Friday. This proves to be a bit of a problem, as all of the permits have been sold - as have the permits for Saturday and Sunday. But after a bit of wrangling we manage to get permits for the guys and I breathe a sigh of relief!

Day 6 - Thursday
I zoom off early to Kigali to collect the Sun journalists, while the rest of the crew travel to the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project to see the work that it does to prepare the world's one and only captive mountain gorilla for release into the wild. This three-year-old female was seized after she was taken from the wild. Her mother and almost certainly some other members of her group will have been killed so that the poachers could take her.

Mountain gorillas do not survive in captivity, and this little baby is only alive now because she is still on living in the mountain range where she was born, with access to the specialist foodstuffs that grow here, and to very specialist veterinary attention. At the moment they are focusing on teaching her 'how to be a gorilla' - by getting her to play with lowland gorillas of her age, and ensuring that she doesn't have too much interaction with people.

After collecting the journalists I return to the hotel to hear the shocking news that there has been a car accident and Emma, one of our film crew, is in hospital. She doesn't seem to be seriously hurt, but there are some concerns because she has hit her head hard.It means that the rest of the evening is a rather stressed and sombre affair, but Graeme meets the guys from The Sun and they relax and, despite everything, have a laugh.

Day 7 - Friday
Today I take the Sun journalists to see the Susa group, while Graeme and the crew head off to see the Amahoro group.

This trip up the volcano is much more perilous than Monday, as heavy rains have turned the paths into deep liquid mud.

We struggle up the volcano for about two hours, seemingly slipping back three steps for every one that we take, before the guide takes us down to a clearing where we can see lots of black fur-balls. The first animal that we get close to is a female nursing her month-old baby. Virginia, the Sun reporter, is absolutely blown away, and Paul, the photographer, who seems every inch the tough Fleet Street snapper, is also clearly moved.

After a few minutes, a large male wanders over to us and we have to move away - more to protect him from our germs than to protect ourselves - and as we move down the hill we get a wonderful view of the rest of the group - including the only mountain gorilla twins ever known to have survived. These two bundles of energy are now nearly three years old, and cling to each other very sweetly. All the babies in the group seem to spend most of their time bundling one another or wrestling.

The hour spent with them comes to a close as the rain starts to fall, and I find myself between the dominant silverback and the sheltered area that he wants to reach to escape the downpour. I try to move out of the way, but I'm cornered, and his fur brushes against me as he passes. Scary but very cool!
We wander down the hill on a high, and even the three occasions where I go head over heels into the mud can't dampen my enthusiasm.

Meanwhile Graeme and the film crew have been taking Jean, whose ranger father was killed, to see the animals that he died to protect. It is a deeply moving experience for all of them, and despite Jean's shyness it is clear that he is very inspired.

Day 8 - Saturday
We travel to Murambi, the rather gruesome site of a horrific mass murder during the genocide in 1994. It is hard to understand how in this peaceful, united, friendly and remarkably safe country such an atrocity could have taken place so recently.

On the way, Graeme has a kick-about with some children in a nearby village - but after the visit the mood is sombre.

It is a strange end to such an uplifting trip, but helps me to understand this complicated country a little more. It also allows us to reflect that the gorillas - isolated from all of the tragedy that unfolded 12 years ago - are helping to unite and rebuild this country and its shattered people.