Gorilla Tracking


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Published: August 6th 2012
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As it was my birthday, I decided to splash out and pay the $500 for a permit to see the mountain gorillas at Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. The fact that they had recently put up the price to $750 in Rwanda and that rebels had moved into the Virunga National Park in DRC, meant that Bwindi was my only viable option to see the gorillas. These mountain gorillas live in only two places in the world - the Bwindi NP and the National Park shared between DRC, Rwanda and Uganda comprised of the Virunga, Parc Des Volcanes and Mgahinga NPs. Bwindi is the only place in the world that gorillas and chimpanzees co-habit the same forest.

I took the 8 hour bus journey from Kampala to Kabale. There I made inquiries about how to get to Ruhija, the village in Bwindi National Park where I would be staying and would begin my tracking. There is no public transport there, so I went to what used to be a park information office, but is now a private company's office. They offered to bring me there and back for $100! Instead, I got a boda boda driver to take me there for 30,000 UGS (approx 10 euro). This was a 52km ride and at first was not too bad as we drove along a sealed road. However, after about 26km, we turned on to a dirt track into the park and this was where the ride got, eh, interesting. I was carrying my backpack on my back, while trying to hold my smaller one in front. This made trying to stay on the back as we drove through quite difficult and very uncomfortable. The scenery as we approached was incredible, but I wasn't in a position to really enjoy it. After about an hour and half we reached Ruhija and I dismounted pretty sore in several places. The only thing that I can be glad about was that it wasn't raining. I think there was a good chance we could have slid off the road down one of the mountains if it had.

Ruhija is a very small village up in the mountains, but as it was market day, there were quite a lot of people around who had come from all over the mountains. I checked into the Gorilla Friends Camp and set up my tent. It was rainy season in the rainforest, so this was a pretty ambitious move. After about an hour or so I learned why the rainforest is called so and not the dryforest. For about an hour or so it absolutely bucketed down and I could only watch and pray that my recently acquired 15 euro tent would prove itself to be impenetrable like the forest. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case and there was so much surface water, it was flooded from beneath. Luckily, the people at the camp took sympathy on me and offered me a self contained room for the same price as they were charging me for pitching a tent.

After a pretty decent night sleep, interrupted once by another thunderstorm, which made me even happier I had abandoned my tent, I was up at 7 for breakfast before going to the Ruhija HQ to meet up with the rest of my tracking group. I was going to be tracking the Oruzogo group, a family of 23 gorillas. There were 7 of us in the tracking group and 3 of us were taken in the back of a pick-up with the guides. The pick-up sustained a puncture about halfway, so we had to walk the rest of the way.

We reached the point where we would be entering the forest and embarked on a one and a half hour trek, which had us first going down some very steep descents, then up some similarly steep ascents. There were also a few streams to be crossed on rickety wooden bridges. It was very slippy and sticky at times and I think everyone took a tumble at east once. Our guides were in constant contact with the trackers via walkie-talkie who had set out at dawn to locate the gorillas' exact position. As we met them, we suddenly saw one of the black backs eating away on some plants. The guides hacked away some of the thick vegetation so we could get closer.

The groups of gorillas, which can be tracked have all been habituated to humans. This means that the people working in the park spend at least 2 years visiting the gorillas everyday before members of the public are allowed come into contact with them. Only one group is allowed to track each group of gorillas per day and you can only spend one hour with them. I felt that this was enough, but I think we got lucky as we saw blackbacks, a mother with a child and also came into close contact with a silverback, the male leader of the group. At one point we were watching the silverback eating away, when he suddenly got up and disappeared behind some trees. Next thing we saw the trees shaking and some unusual grunting. Our guide informed us that he was mating with one of the females. This only lasted a few seconds, but the guide informed us that he wasn't finished, it was just that the female wasn't happy with the position! The silverback didn't seem too bothered as he sat down and started eating again.

We were told before we started that if a gorilla began to charge at us that we weren't to run away. We were supposed to crouch down and that they would stop. After the first growl came from the silverback about 10 metres away from me, I can honestly admit that I don't think I would be so brave to just crouch down! The animals aren't really dangerous though, as they are so used to humans. The most friendly of them took a swipe at one of the guides though, but apparently that was just to inform him that he was going to be eating from the tree he was standing under. After an hour, we tracked back the same way, got a lift back to the HQ and were presented with a certificate.

That night I had a few beers with a Dutch couple who had also tracked the gorillas with me. It was a quiet enough affair and I was in bed by about 9 o'clock. Not the wildest birthday I have had, but maybe at my age it's a sign of things to come. It was a pretty special way to spend my birthday and even though $500 is a lot of money to spend on a one day activity, I can't think of many better things to spend the money on.


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