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Published: June 24th 2013
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Well here we are just about to head away from our home for the last four nights at Lake Bunyonoi, Uganda.
When we last blogged we had just arrived into Kampala and were ready to head towards Bunyoni which was to be our base for the gorilla trek and our Rwanda trip.
The day trip from Kampala was long and tiring about 11 hrs but we stopped at the equator and had the usual photos of one foot on each side but didn't get to test the swirling water theory. The scenery here is amazingly lush and I think if you stuck an ice block stick into the ground it would grow! There are banana, sugar and tea plantations everywhere. What ever it is in the ground that grows big things it has obviously rubbed off on the cows as the cows here are a special breed which have amazing size horns.
We arrive into Lake Bunyoni late in the evening when darkness had fallen and set up our tents ready for a 4.30 am start the next day. When the alarm went off it was not a pleasant feeling but we
both hoped that the rewards for the day would make it pale into insignificance as we we heading to hopefully see the mountain gorillas of the Bwindi impenetrable forest. Now they call it impenetrable for a reason which we found out real quick!! When we started our walk we were accompanied by a lead guide who works for the Uganda Wildlife Service and he has two soldiers who come along for protection against forest elephants. We started up a fairly steep track through villages and got to the top of a hill which opened into an amazing view of the Bwindi impenetrable (there goes that word again!!) forest .
We headed down though more village crops and hit the forest. It was extremely similar to NZ bush except with one addition and that was the undergrowth! The guide was constantly hitting with a machete to make a passable way and it was hard going. Add to this the steep wet hills thick with red mud and it added a whole new meaning to impenetrable. We were heading up hill after hill and getting thicker and thicker in the forest with our guide all the time calling on
his walkie-talkie to three other guides who had been in the forest since dawn tracking to find a family of gorillas. We had been going for three and a half hours when we reached the top of a hill and our leader said we were not far away from the family..only another few minutes...As they say in all the western movies "man talk with forked tongue" we kept going up a really steep hill and suddenly we came across a huge immature male gorilla in the bush beside us. He was eating scrubs and was very obscured by bush and then as quick as we saw him he disappeared. It was an amazing feeling being so close to a wild gorilla but we all secretly hoped for a better sighting.
According to the law, from the first sighting we were only allowed to spend one hour with the family and this is seriously enforced so we immediately started to head into what could best be described as "really impenetrable forest" which required us all scrambling over the top of bushes and under trees and through mud on our hands and knees for the promise of a better
sighting of a gorilla. To put this into perspective we had each paid A lot on money for the pleasure? of tramping and to have a short sighting would have been a little disappointing.
We bush crashed for about ten minutes and then the guide held up his hand and about 5 metres away from us was the leader of the family....a huge silverbacked male gorilla just sitting there eating bush and scrubs. He was sitting in thick bush with all but a part of his face obscured. He appeared a little annoyed at our presence and grunted at us to which the guides did a good impersonation of a calm gorilla sound back to him which seemed to calm him. Words do not express the feelings which we all felt at this moment but I will try....We sat absolutely awe struck and blown away by the fact that a huge 200 kilo dominant silverback gorilla was 5 metres from us. He had the ability to reach over and rip off our arms and hit us with the soggy end but chose to eat bush instead. Then without a word of good bye he got up and took off
through the bush smashing it as he went. We tried to follow but it took us about fifteen minutes to make any head way and we were trying to scramble down an extremely steep bush covered hill. At one point I grabbed a hand full of bush to hold on and found that I had a really good grip on a blackberry bush which kind of stung a little but we had no choice as it was that or tumble. Then we broke out into a clearing and right in front of us totally unobscured was the same silverback sitting down and eating. He resembled a fat Buddha and as luck would have it he decided that half an hour in this position would be good for his weight programme. So we spent the half hour just sitting, watching and photographing him from about seven metres away. Some photos were of him and some were of each of us standing infront of him..again I won't even try to say in words what this was like....OK I will try cause I know you're all sitting on the edge of your seats?? It was fantastic!! That will do it for the moment
anyway.
After what seemed like five minutes we were told "that's it times up" and at that moment a bay gorilla popped out with his mother just about the silverback. It just got better and better as our guide allowed us another ten minutes with this as he said that they normally don't get this type of sighting. Eventually we had to head away but not before another three gorillas passed us about 5 metres away in the bush partially obscured.
All in all it was an amazing experience which I am sure will stay with us all for a long time.
We spent a total of 9 hours trekking and watching gorillas and add to that the two and a half hour ride each way to get there it made for a 14 hour day but all worth it.
The next day we had organized a day trip over the border into Rwanda specifically visiting the Genocide memorial museum and other places of interest. The drive to Kigali was great as the country has strived, since the horrors of 1994, to rebuild and this included new roads all
round which made a great difference to the roads we had been on before this day. Rwanda was a step up again from Uganda as far as growing crops was concerned and was very lush.
We arrived into Kigali and spent three hours at the memorial walking around and reading the information including personal interviews with survivors etc. While the atrocities of 1994 were smaller (about 2 million murdered) than the horrors of the Holocaust it was a similar experience to what we found in Israel when we visited in 97 with Mike and Sandy.
We the went on and had lunch at the sight of the actual hotel portrayed in the movie "Hotel Rwanda" before visiting a memorial to 10 Belgium soldiers who were executed during the situation which happened.
I will not try to put into words that which we experienced but to say it was a draining day would be an understatement.
So as you can see we have had a bitter/sweet experience over the last few days and experiences which will stay with us both for a very very long time.
Tomorrow we hit the track again and head back towards Kenya stopping at a place called Jinja before heading into Kenya in the middle of the week.
So in the words of the two Ronnie's...."that's goodnight from me and goodnight from me"
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Alan and Anna
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Glad to know you having a great time. It is 25th June 2013 and it is 12.39 pm and this is the first blog we have had for quite a while since you were in Botswana. It must have been a great experience to see the gorillas and also to see the memorials of those who died in Rwanda. Looking forward to having another blog from you.