Overland Tour 28-30 of 35

---

Gorillas...Man’s best friend. Nature’s great white beast. The last free animals on the planet. Lolol none of those. We footed the huge bill for a gorilla permit and now it was time to go see what we could see. The group that trekked yesterday only had short glimpses of black and silver hurrying through the Bwindi Impenetrable Forrest. No one got a super amazing photo and the older South African couple was quite perturbed at the fat family being a bunch of slow fattys... Im so glad I didn’t have to trek with them. Our group was young and fit and we made our way up a road for about an hour and then through the jungle for about 45 minutes before we saw our first sighting. A huge 300 kilo silverback munching away on some leaves. He was the leader of this particular family and he was a fun one. He let out a very very impressive and unusually long fart in our presence and we all giggled like school girls. Im not one to take selfies and I don’t really like being in a picture anyways, but I was asked if I wanted someone to take my pic with the beast in it as well. I kind of just went through the motions as, again, I don’t really like taking pictures with wild animals of all things…buuuut I did get what I was looking for. I approached to be in the frame and the fat monkey didn’t like that one bit. Yep. He charged. Another way too big creature from Africa got mad at me and decided the only way we could interact was for him to severely beat me down… Luckily that didn’t happen because when I turned around to run away the two police with AK-47s, the two in the field trackers, and our mountain guide all told me to stop! Apparently that’s the main thing with all these huge things here; they only mock charge to scare you away. They wont full charge unless they absolutely have to. So I turned and took a step away and then stopped and turned back. He had stopped his charge as well. Wow. Jesus. Nature is a scary thing. And fun too! Hahaha. After we all calmed down the next guy lined up for a snap and I was the cameraman this time. His camera sucked so when I took the pic I had to show him to see if he liked it and while he was looking at it something triggered in the colossal giant and he made two lurches forward baring his teeth. I didn’t move from the lesson I just had but so much so that I couldn’t even push the button on my camera to forever immortalize the last thing you might see before endless pain…hahaha this guy was awesome!!! We saw a mother with a baby and another younger female in our two hour stint in the jungle. So cool. I didn’t bring my huge lens for my fancy camera as I thought the dense undergrowth would be too thick to use a long distance lens (I was wrong) especially simply from the name of the place. So my pics were a bit far away but I still enjoyed the crap out of my experience and the hike back was about an hour in total much to the chagrin of all in the party as the group the night before didn’t get back til dark (7pm). And as it turned out the 2^nd group of the day didn’t get back til even later (about 8:20). What another amazing day! Our next was just a ride back to Kampala where the internet was good and the weather was cool. Actually it rained at night making me wonder about the water levels for our white water rafting adventure on the Nile the next morning.

---