I Penetrated the Impenetrable!!

I got up at 630 and was having a quick breakfast at 730. By 8 we were watching an introduction video on the Gorillas and their personalities and behaviors.

I was assigned one of three Gorilla families in the area. The Gorillas travel and live in a family structure. There are three families in this area. There are 3 others in another part of the forest, 4 in Rwanda and 3 that move across the border between Uganda and Rwanda on a regular basis. There are only 7 families that have been habituated to deal with people. The others are wild and one group is used for scientific study.

I was placed with the “H” family. There were three families in our area. The M, R and H. The R family was located closest to our camp and often they were seen in the immediate camp area. The visitors that were assigned to this group were older folks (over 50). I was assigned the H group which consisted of me and 6 others between the ages of 28 – 39 (me being the 39). H stands for the family name of the gorillas however I think it should stand for HARD. For the next 3 hours I climbed up and down 3 mountains trekking the H Family of gorillas. The climbs were often straight up in very thick, hot, wet rain forest jungle! It was absolutely HARD!! All of us were having a very hard time of it.

About 2 hours into the trek we came upon an area where the gorillas had been camping the night before. All of the trees and leaves in the area were flattened. When the gorillas leave the nest they use it as a bathroom first so that no one else can use it. Then they will travel around 1 km in search of new food and a place to live for the night. The gorillas spend most of their time eating vegetation. They do not get a great deal of exercise and they nap often. After about 3 hours we were told that we were close. We prepared our cameras and left our bags behind. The guide took us through some very thick jungle bush. He stopped us and began to hack at some trees and vines with his large knife. Through the bush and with the hacking we were able to finally see a hairy black shadow. As he hacked more leaves away a gorilla appeared! It was MASSIVE! And only about 10 feet from us. As the guide cut more trees and leaves we were able to get closer. The Black Back gorilla (male not yet a silverback) looked at us once. He stopped eating and lay down. At this point he played shy and covered his face, and then he began to pose for us and even rolled on his back and crossed his leg as a human would do. We spent 20 min with this guy.

We eventually moved on and were able to see and hear many trees breaking and falling down from the various gorillas in the area. This family was known to have 21 gorillas. We found another gorilla (black back) that was sitting and eating. None of these gorillas paid any attention to us. They would look at us once and then never look at us again.

Then the guide hit the jackpot! Just to the right of this guy the guide cleared an area and discovered a full family which included mom, 3 babies and the one and only SILVER BACK MOUNTIAN GORILLA!! The DAD.

The Silver Back was HUGE!!! Check out the pics. The kids were playful and entertaining. It was great to see them and from about 14 feet away. Our cameras never stopped.

We spent 40 min in the area and watched various gorillas that were around us (remember there are 21 all in this one location and presently we are in their den and we are surrounded). The gorillas are only habituated to humans by only allowing a maximum of 1 hour of human interaction per day. This is strictly enforced. The permit to see the Mountain Gorilla’s is $500.00. This goes towards conservation, the guide and the 2 armed guards, the vehicle and driver and the porters (if you want to hire one).

The trip was incredible as was seeing the Mountain gorillas in their natural habitat!
Some more info:

“Others were feeding here,” he said, pointing at a sapling stripped of its sweet green bark, “but our gorillas have gone up.”

When mountain gorillas have a choice, they always go up. For nearly five hours we had tracked this family of gorillas, cutting our path through the thick tangle of Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, still known by its former and more picturesque name, the Impenetrable Forest.
Nestled among the steep, cultivated hillsides of southwest Uganda, Bwindi Park supports half of the world’s population of 600 endangered mountain gorillas in a remote pocket of lush rainforest. Two of the park’s 23 gorilla families have been habituated to accept daily visits by small tourist groups. Our party included gorilla trackers, a park guide, and six British and American tourists, doggedly pulling themselves up the rugged hillside.

Bwindi is now the most popular park for gorilla tourism. But that wasn’t always the case. American researcher Dian Fossey devoted over 15 years to the study and preservation of mountain gorillas in neighboring Rwanda. Her work, her book (then movie), Gorillas in the Mist, and her still unsolved murder brought international attention to the species.

Gorillas were a major tourist attraction for Rwanda until 1994, when civil war and massive tribal bloodletting left more than 500,000 people dead and millions displaced from their homes. Political instability there and in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), made both countries unreliable travel destinations. The turmoil spilled over into Uganda in 1999, when a group of outcast Rwandan rebels attacked Bwindi Park, brutally murdering a warden and several tourists. Since that time heightened security has prevented further incidents and more and more tourists are choosing Ugandan parks for their gorilla tracking adventure.

To many people, Uganda brings to mind its own images of political unrest. Dictator Idi Amin led the country to ruin in the 1970s, committing unspeakable atrocities and acts of genocide against its people. Although less publicized, Uganda’s suffering continued under Amin’s eventual successor, Milton Obote, cementing Uganda’s reputation as a place hardly safe for its own people, let alone foreign tourists. But since Obote’s overthrow in 1985, Uganda has enjoyed nearly two decades of social and economic recovery.

“Bwindi is also home to a thriving gorilla ecotourism program, which generates much needed foreign revenue for Uganda annually by bringing paying travelers into the company of mountain gorillas. Four of the 30 family groups are habituated for tourism, or conditioned to tolerate the presence of humans for short durations.

The other mountain gorilla stronghold is located just south of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in the Virunga Volcanoes on the borders of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The last census of the Virunga gorilla population in 2003 revealed 380 gorillas, up from 324 individuals counted in the previous census in 1989. In spite of incursions by farmers and rebels into the parks, and a few recent poaching events, Virungas' mountain gorillas are persisting as well, thanks to sustained conservation efforts by the guards and staff members within that landscape. The current total of mountain gorillas at both locations brings the worldwide tally to approximately 720 individual animals”.

During the trek we had seen many interesting things in the rain forest. We had come across earth worms that were about 1.5” in length and about 2cm thick! A fisherman’s dream! We had also seen a couple of snails. These snails were about 6” long with large shells. The guides were grossed out when we mentioned that we eat snails LOL….

We were also witness to a group of Red Tailed Monkeys traveling across the jungle canopy.
When we arrived back at the camp we were exhausted, dirty, wet and hungry. We were also proud of our accomplishment. I had travelled the trek with two Canadians one from Calgary and one from Edmonton who now lives in England. Both are bankers and are traveling all over Uganda. Met a Dutch couple who we were worried about as the guy, Charles, had a knee injury that cropped up during the extreme climbing we were doing. And I had met a great gal from the USA who was travelling with her boyfriend from Australia all over Africa. They had 11 days to get to Johannesburg to catch a flight home. They weren’t sure how they were going to make it was they were backpacking throughout the trip and were running short on funds. She is an accountant that decided to take time off and explore the world. Thanks to all of them that we all made it through the trek!

We had dinner and a few drinks as we shared stories about our adventure.
I headed off to bed, this time with no spiders!