Gorilla land

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Geo: -1.20566, 29.6576

Point number 14 on the permit stated…. Gorilla tracking can be challenging and you need to be reasonably fit … the place we were heading to is called Bwindi Impenetrable forest.. the funny thing is we did not notice these important points prior to heading out to track mountain gorillas. In hind sight the two adjectives we needed to be aware of were … mountain & impenetrable…

The brochure also says… Bwindi is 327 square km of tangled vegetation draped over a deeply fissured landscape of steep slippery valleys and high draughty ridges… I cannot think of a more apt description. Sadly, there are only 760 Mountain Gorillas left in the world, so this also does not make them easy to find.

Spike you would have been impressed, this is the hardest climbing I have ever done, Gorillas do not stick to pathways as I had innocently imagined. The lead guide had a gun and a machete and forged ahead wearing only gum boots… we trailed behind sweating profusely.. stumbling, tripping and falling as quietly as we could.. absolutely exhausted pondering on the 2 adjectives mentioned above.

When we finally got to the Gorillas the guide said.. you can get your cameras out now.. I said .. hang on a minute I am ###$#@@ (stuffed) the gorillas can wait..

The gorillas were in deep jungle and a bit hard to spot, they were more like moving shadows.. the Silverback was impressive.. man those things are huge I really mean huge. The funny thing is autofocus on the camera does not work in the jungle and to focus on a black hairy thing in the shadows is very tricky hence very average photo's. I can also confirm gorilla shit does stink and it is huge and with a family group of 34 gorillas there was a lot of it.

The result was we saw the gorillas and it was interesting.. we conquered a very small part of the forest.. and returned absolutely knackered. We are not planning to do anything like that again. Darren has said if you can't see it through the windscreen then I am not interested.

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Photos

Silverback
This sucker was bigman!.. He was really big

Gorillas at Play
These dam things were hard to photo. almost like shadows of the forrest

Lisa Looking
A little freaky when they charge.

Volcanoes
Outlook to the Congo volcanoes

Comments

[mikeandaveriel]

Awesome scenery !! Wasn't too sure if was Darren or real gorillas in the other photos LOL :-)