Almost 2,000 years ago, a Greek geographer named Ptolemy drew a map of Africa that included a mysterious snow-capped mountain range deep inside the continent. He called them 'the Mountains of the Moon' and said they were the source of the Nile. For centuries, European maps copied his guess, but nobody from outside Africa actually saw the range until 1888, when an explorer named Henry Morton Stanley spotted snowy peaks rising out of the clouds.
The Rwenzori are different from Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya in one important way. Those two are old volcanoes - giant mountains that grew up out of the plains. The Rwenzori are 'block mountains' - they were pushed up when two huge pieces of the Earth's crust crashed into each other. So they have jagged ridges instead of one rounded peak.
Walking in the Rwenzori is like walking through a strange dream. The lower slopes are covered in thick rainforest where chimpanzees live. Higher up there are eerie zones of giant lobelias and groundsels - plants that grow huge here even though they are tiny in other parts of the world. At the top, glaciers and snow.
The local Bakonzo people have lived around the Rwenzori for many generations. They have their own names for the peaks and they know the safest paths up. Today, Bakonzo guides lead climbers carefully through the mountains and help look after the national park around them.