Mzungus in the mist

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After another couple of long, bumpy, hot, dusty, hand waving days on the truck it was time to cross the border into Rwanda. Everyone was on the gorilla countdown and getting excited about doing our trek to go and see the mountain gorillas in the wild, Dian Fossey styles. Rwanda is a stunningly beautiful country. It's really hilly and all the hills are lush and covered in crops, the people are super friendly, and it's difficult to believe the horrific genocide which took place there no much more than 10 years ago. We did a stop off in Kigali to visit the genocide museum. It was emotionally draining, as you would expect, and the truck was quiet on the way to that night's camp site.
If you're reading this and think I'm rushing, I am. We only have a few minutes in this town and I'm so far behind on this whole blog thing - photos are out of the question, unless I had 3 hours up my sleeve .
Anyway, so we head to bed early in eager anticipation of the next day. Alarms set early, for 5am, we were up and having breakfast before the sun came up. It wasn't until 6.30am (30mins after the 4WDs were supposed to come and collect us) that our guides realised they'd forgotten about the 1 hour time difference in Rwanda!! 4am wake ups are not good.
We were split into groups of 8 people for our gorilla treks, and I was lucky to only have a 35 min drive on the most pot holed road ever imaginable, and then an hour and a half trek through mud, before we got our first glimpse of the mountain gorilla in their naural habitat. It was actually a bit scarier than I had anticipated. The family we visited had us surrounded and we were trapped in between bamboo trees for quite some time until the gorillas relaxed. Or so we thought. It was only when I was crouched down at the front of our group that the Silverback, Charles, decided to test out our nerves. He charged. At me. Stranded in between two bamboo trees. I was petrified beyond belief!! Our guides were telling us all to "stand up! stand up! don't run! don't look at him!". Yep, thanks guides, I couldn't have run even if I tried. It turned out that Charles was only doing a 'fake out' charge......where he runs toward you then darts away at the last minute, but it scared the bejeezus out of me for sure!! He calmed down a bit after that - I obviously wasn't much of a threat! - but my knees were certainly shaking for the 15 mins or so. We got to spend about an hour with the family, and it was an amazing experience. I tried to take lots of photos but I wanted to make sure that I also spent some of the time just watching them. They are huge, really huge, but gentle looking at the same time (except in the 'fake out' charge situation).
We left the gorilla family to siesta and headed back down the mud, back to the campsite. I managed to miraculously time my shower in order to get hot water. A milo before bed. What a day.

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