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Published: January 28th 2006
Deep Thoughts
Trying to understand why Man is paying $360 per hour to see himOur journey to track the Mountain Gorillas began in Kampala Bus Park at 6:30 am. The bus only started at 8:00 am as it is common practice for the bus owners to start only after the bus is full ! After a loooong day on the bus, we reached Butogota around 5:30 pm. We got a pick-up ride to Buhoma, the entry to Bwindi National Park. We stayed at Buhoma Community Bandas, a non-profit organization that helps the people that have been displaced from the forest.
Our Banda, a hut like structure with modern amenities inside, was in a prime location - with front row seats to the see the amazing jungle we plan to visit the next day.
At dinner, we met fellow travelers who were there to track the mountain gorillas. We met Mark and Ioana, a lovely British couple, with whom we ended up spending the next several days traveling together in South Western Uganda.
After a brief instructions on do/don'ts while near the Gorillas, we set off on a 45 minute 4x4 ride to the start of the hike. We were going to track the Habinyanja group of 23 Gorillas. There are 30 Gorilla
Little Fellow
Impressing the visitors with his climbing capabilities groups, but tourists are only allowed to visit three groups. There are approx 500 Mountain Gorillas world-wide, with most of them in the border region of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda.
The first hour we spent hiking through Banana plantations and Tea estates before we hit the wall of dense vegetation - Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. Our guide was radioed in by other trackers that they have located the Gorillas and they are an hour away from us. Our Guide charged into the Jungle frantically followed by us eight tourists and the security guards. Using the Machete the guide created a path for us to follow. We made our way through the thick jungle hanging on to vines and jumping over shrub. It was a tough slog through the forest - It is called Impenetrable Forest for a reason.
After an hour, we saw the first glimpse of these giant gorillas on the trees. We quickly found a couple of them on the ground eating leaves. The Gorillas were 5 metres away, making all human expressions and looking straight in the eye. We were surrounded by the gorillas on the trees and the ground .
It was an amazing encounter to see these creatures so close to you. The silverback Gorilla, the oldest male and the leader of the group, weighing 400 pounds, climbed down a large tree and gave us a quick glance before dissappearing into the shrub. The Silverback was enormous and human-like and scary !
At one point, a big gorilla got tired of being photographed and ran away by us. It was about 4 ft from me and the sudden movement literally froze me.
A baby Gorilla was very curious and would come close to us and perform its tree climbing skills and pose for us. The Mama Gorilla came by and scooped up the baby and took it to safety. We spent an hour with the gorillas before we reluctantly left them behind and made our way back to camp.
UWA only allows 8 visitors per day to visit this group, to reduce human impact on these endangered species. It was definitely one of the best wild encounters any of us have ever had and worth the expensive tracking fees !
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Lev
non-member comment
Wow!
Hey Sai. Thanks for sharing with all of us. We can live vicariously while dwindiling our own lives away at home, waiting for the next weekend to come...