Gorillas, more Gorillas and quite a lot of Impenetrable forest

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We had to get up early to go and head to the Bwindi National park head office to meet our guides for visiting the Gorillas. Unfortunately Dan could not be persuaded that the cost was worth it so he very valiantly stayed as our driver whilst we went off to hunt for them.

There were probably about 25 other people wanting to do the same but the numbers are very limited and we ended up in a group of 5 with 2 Spanish ladies. We also seemed to end up in the group that was destined to walk the furthest to find Gorillas but I guess that means we got better value for money.

The trackers and rangers are constantly monitoring where the Gorilla groups are and the ones tracking our Group took about 2 hours to find them and we were walking in the vicinity as they zeroed in on the location. Along the way we encountered a wild Male who was not in a group and very aggressive. The two guards pointed AK-47 in his direction and the guides through every single branch in the vicinity at him. It would seem this was not a normal situation but unfortunately due to the dense foliage around us even though he was huge and only 20 feet away we didn’t see him. However we most certainly heard him.

Our rattled guides calmed down and we went on. We soon left any semblance of a track and were hacking our way through the forest with Machetes to get to where the Gorillas were. The going was certainly tough and the “impenetrable forest” certainly did a good job but after about 2 hours we finally found the trackers who had zeroed in on our group of 15 or so Gorillas.

These were Mountain Gorillas of which there are only apparently 1063 left in the World and only in the wild of Uganda, Rwanda and the Congo. It was very special and I’m sure the pictures will not do it justice but we were literally 1-2 m from them at times as they wondered around us. First picking nuts from the trees and swinging around and then in the foliage playing and eating.

It was an amazing hour with them and we all really enjoyed it, I hope you like some of the photos. We then spent an hour or so hiking up hills and through the foliage to get to an access road and eventually back to our truck which Dan was happily waiting in.

Since it was only lunchtime we decided to make for the Rwanda border and get ahead of time and go for Kigali. The road out of the impenetrable forest was hard work but then we were on tarmac. The border itself was empty and we sailed through in about an hour.

We made it to Kigali which is a rural capital set on rolling hills, tomorrow we hope to do a little exploring before we move on. We also managed to tweak our half-broken handbrake to work much more effectively as choking the car and leaving in gear isn’t ideal. Hopefully Warwick will bring out a few critical parts in a week or so and we’ll be as good as new.

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