Gorillas in my midst

I travelled to the Congo-Uganda border to penetrate the Bwindi Impenetrable Forrest. Uganda says that they have the most remaining mountain gorillas in the world and most of them live here at Bwindi. For years, and as Dian Fossey found out the hard way, mountain gorillas were poached, but not for anything collectible. The mountain locals (many of whom are pygmies) killed them either for bush meat or killed them because they are a symbol of "bad luck." While the government of Uganda continues to try to get its act together, the one area that they do seem committed to is the preservation of the mountain gorilla. They only allow 24 permits a day to visit Bwindi and of those visiting, you have to clear a doctor's check list in order to go (as gorillas can contract any number of human diseases). If you are turned back, you have travelled however thousands of miles, see no gorillas, and only get a 40% refund of your permit fee. Bottom line, don't get sick!

We began our trek up the dense mountain in the morning after learning what we needed to in a pre-trek briefing (most of which you can read about in a previous post). There were 8 people in my group, along with various porters (who help carry your bags and push you up the mountain), two mountain guides and two armed men from the Ugandan Army. The Army personnel carry AK-47s in case something bad were to happen (if a tourist is killed by a gorilla, the feeling is that business will suffer), but they have been trained to first shoot in the air to scare off the impending attack.

My porter was Milton and he is 24 years old and has lived in Bwindi his entire life. I didn't really think I needed a porter, but once I saw the grade I would be climbing, the muddied and overgrown path (and because it helps out the local economy for a price of $15), I relented. A few hours before we started our trek, two trackers went up before us to visit the last place this gorilla group was. We were going to find a family of 19 gorillas with one silverback. Recently there were two silverbacks, but they got into a fight and one ran off with a couple of females to start his own group. After about 3 hours of hiking we heard via walkie-talkie that the trackers had the family in their sights and we made a bee-line through a swampy area to get to them. I am finding it difficult to put into words how amazing it is to see these animals just hanging around being a family together. Babies rough housing and rolling around together and then scampering off into their mother's arms, females tending to the mighty silverback (who never looked directly at us but you could sense he was aware of our every move), and younger males eating pounds of leaves. Gorillas will consume anywhere from 130-170 pounds of greenery each day.

After staying with the gorillas for an hour (the max one is allowed), and through a rain storm (gorillas do not frolic in the rain, but prefer to wait it out in the thick underbrush), my group made its decent. It truly was a once in a life time opportunity and I am grateful I got the chance. I am almost embarrassed to be blogging about it as I can do it no justice. Forgive me.