WEATHER: A glorious gorilla trekking day of 25C
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Seeing the whole 13 family members of Bwenge
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Having to leave the gorilla family after an hour
BUYS OF THE DAY: My porter Dan was a god send for 10USD
WORD OF THE DAY: OMG – WOW – OMG - WOW
ANIMALS SEEN TODAY: 13 gorillas’ and numerous goats
CAMP SITE RANKING: Same as last night – no change
Early start this morning with breakfast at 6am. So there were all sorts of alarms going off from 5am. I set mine for 5.20am to get the early toilet run in. A note here to actually read and pay attention to your medication instructions. As I was popping all sorts of pills for the gorilla’s this morning, I took my malaria tablet before I had eaten (as directed it needs to be taken with food) within 30 minutes I was running to the toilet and having a morning spew as I had not yet eaten. Lesson learned for me.
We were all like excited school children on a school excursion. We were all breakfasted and ready to go at 6.30am when our 4x4 were to pick us up. Well after a small delay, we left the mission just before 7am to drive the 30 minutes to head to the gorilla registration center, register and to get sorted into our groups and head out. It was quite busy here, but there are other tours that also leave from here including the golden monkeys tour and tours that hike to Diane Fossy’s grave site and some of the gorilla’s she worked with are also located with her.
So we were broken into 3 groups of 8. There were 2 medium treks and a longer trek to get to different families, so we shifted all the hikers around to put the fit people into the last group, at this point we still didn’t know what families we were getting or how far they were etc. So one by one the groups left the area to head on their own gorilla adventure. There are only 8 gorilla families that can be visited each day, with a maximum of 8 people per group, making a total of 64 people a day maximum. I guess that explains why it is so hard to get permits as that is only 23,360 people a year that get to experience the Rwandan Mountain Gorilla’s, assuming they run on public holidays, which if they don’t, and taking into account low season, that reduces that number. So we are doing something pretty special, which we knew, but the numbers show just how hard it is to get into see these magnificent animals. There are another 10 groups of gorilla’s that are visited but only for research purposes, so these are not visited by tourists. In total Rwanda have approximately 270 groups, 700 in total if you include Uganda and the Congo. So even though they are endangered, tourism is not ruining an entire population of mountain gorillas. In saying that tourism also helps these magnificent beasts with part of the permit money that is paid helps keep the trackers employed to keep the poachers out, making it harder for them and the gorilla’s safe.
So we met our guide Hope. He was super cool and he had an A3 colour copy of the gorilla family we would be meeting today. We are visiting the Bwenge Family. There are 13 members in the family, one male silverback, 6 female adults and 6 baby gorilla’s. The story behind our family is that Bwenge is the son of Titus, who was one of Diane Fossy’s original gorillas’s and also known to be the longest serving silverback, strongest, and also the silverback with the most amount of children ever fathered. So the Bwenge Family’s silverback named, Bwenge, was the son of Titus and broke away from his original family to start his own. The twist to this gorilla story is that Bwenge’s mum also left the Titus family to join her son, and this is where it gets interesting, Bwenge and his mum then had a child who is now 3months old! There’s a bit of gorilla gossip for you. Apparently it is quite unusual for a mother and son to have a child together, but obviously the Bwenge Family don’t care. Another side note about our wonderful silverback Bwenge is he only likes the ladies that are older than him. All 6 females are older than him, so he is a bit of a cougar gorilla!!!
So we had to drive 30 minutes on a very dusty, rock riddled road through local villages to get as far as the 4x4 would get us. When we got there, there was one guy with a rifle and 5 guys in blue waiting for us. The guy with the gun (which looked like it was 100 years old) was there to not shoot the gorillas, as they are protected, but to keep animals like buffalo away from the family and us. They were real bullets and he does shoot in the air first, but we were also told if you hike to slow, that you could also be on the hit list! Yeah ha ha I knew that would be me!!!! The boys in blue are porters and you can hire them for 10USD and they carry your backpack for you and also help you while trekking if you need a hand up or help with anything. Louise was straight onto it and was the only yes to start with, but as I am sure everyone at the start thinks they don’t need one, Hope bought along an extra porter just in case. So after we were given our hiking sticks, we left our drop point and headed up the mountain. We passed a lot of farmland, most of it potatoes, children saying hello, asking for money, singing, passing small houses with bleating goats and just walking on a small track that was going to lead us to the edge of the National Park. It was tough going, not only due to my lack of fitness, but we were at 2530m when we started, so I am blaming the altitude also on my heavy huffing and puffing. I ended up engaging the ‘spare’ porter, so he could take my bag and it was nice to have a steady hand ready to help me, when I needed that extra oomph to get me up that high step, skinny rock ledge, mud puddle or stumble, my porter Dan was there to help. I think it was the best 10USD (plus 5USD tip) that I have paid all trip. Hope was so good, stopping when he thought the group might need to rest. I think he was using Jo and I as his guide as to when this was, as I am sure the exertion was showing on our faces. I am a walker but not a hiker and Jo is just a smoker. He would blame himself saying how tired he was and he needed a rest and then would look to us when we were ready to go again and the thumbs up from us. He was really sweet.
So 1 hour and 15 minutes later we made it the brick wall of the National Park. Hope kept telling us he had good news but wouldn’t tell us what it was, I was hoping the gorillas were just behind the wall waiting for us with open arms, but after a small rest and an opportunity to take in the view of the valley below, we passed through the wall and we were in gorilla territory! We walked for about another 30 minutes where Hope then told us the gorillas were just around the bend!!! So we had to off load our backpacks and hiking sticks, saying goodbye to our porters and then head further into the jungle. It was also at this point we met our 2 trackers. They get up at 6am to look for the family and then radio back to let gorilla headquarters know where to bring us. It only took them 45 minutes to find them this morning, so we were lucky they hadn’t moved too far from yesterday. One tracker came in with us, with his machete in his hand with Hope and the 8 of us makes 10. The groups are small to minimize the impact of humans in the gorilla’s lives and once we are in and seeing them we get exactly 1 hour with them for the same reason. There were a few tips we were told before heading any further and they were: no pointing, as they may think you are going to throw something, no flash, if you cough or sneeze to cover your mouth, as they can catch human diseases, if a baby is to come over to you to back off slowly otherwise the mother may think you are trying to steal her child, try and always stay 7m away from any gorilla, if an adult is near you to back off slowly and to not make too much noise. Okay, that all seems okay to us, let’s get going!
So not even 10 minutes further into the jungle we saw our first gorilla. And would you believe it was the silverback!!! He was hidden a little bit in the foliage, but he looked massive and hard to believe we were actually seeing our first one. He moved on, so we moved further on, with Hope and tracker making gorilla noises to keep them calm and let them know they were in no danger. Our next and probably the most memorable were seeing the whole family cross in front of us heading back into the jungle. There were 4 adults with babies on their backs and the star Bwenge who posed for us a little bit before moving on. He is one magnificent looking animal, and we were lucky we were in a clearing, so we got awesome photos, and Hope did the rounds of getting our pictures with him in the back ground – this was my WOW moment and I know I must have looked like an idiot with my mouth wide open, but Emma T and I just looked at each other and went WOW – he looked fake, that’s how great he looked, so silky and clean looking and those eyes looking back at us – AMAZING!!!!! It is so hard to put into words how the next 60 minutes flew by. We just followed them around in the jungle, watching them eat and the babies playing together, swinging from branches and we got plenty of time observing the silverback in all his glory. Hope and the tracker were awesome, making sure we all got to see everything, chopping braches and weeds out of the way so we could get photos and just being able to see everything. As it was jungle, we had to be careful of nettles, which some of us got attacked by, and through our clothes as well. They are bloody dangerous buggers, but they only sting for a little while, leave a mosquito looking mark and then they disappear after a few hours, but man they hurt when they get you.
So in the end we had an amazing gorilla experience and it was very sad that we had to leave after our 60 minutes was up, but we had to leave them to get on with their ‘gorilla’ duties and we leave with our AMAZING, once in a life time opportunity we got to spend with them. Just looking around the group, we all had smiles from ear to ear and I couldn’t have thought of a better way that that experience could have been better. AWESOME, INSPIRING, AMAZING can’t even begin to explain how great it was.
We had made lunches that morning to take with us, so we decided to eat them in the shade of the jungle before heading back down the same way we had come. With Dan all packed up, our trackers tipped (we all put in 10USD each) we started to make our way back down the mountain. Our final altitude was 2910, so we had climbed nearly 400m, it was time to descend which I have to say was a lot easier than going up. WE saw some of the same children we saw going up and there was a cute little group that were singing to us as we passed. Lots of waves, smiles and hello’s from the locals as we passed back through their farmland. We all must have looked like we had all won the lotto with the air about us and the smiles on our faces. So about an hour to descend back to our waiting cars, 30 minute drive to a small center where they give us our Gorilla certificates, conveniently there are some shops with local handicrafts, so as I still hadn’t spent much I bought 2 beautiful woven baskets and 2 baby ones for Zoe and Tess. After saying goodbye to Hope and tipping him quite handsomely, we got back in the 4x4 and headed for home.
Once everyone was back, there was a real buzz. Everyone had seen gorillas, everyone got great photos, everyone had stories to tell and we all saw something different and all our groups were different. One group had a family of 32, the other 6 and we had 13, and it didn’t seem to matter which one you had we all had a similar experience getting up close and personal. The old 7m rule didn’t apply too much, it is a good thing that the gorilla’s don’t know this rule as some of us were at times only 1m from these creatures. People were talking to other groups at registration and there were a few people that went out yesterday for 3 hours and didn’t see a single one and had to turn back. Imagine that, but I guess they are creatures of the wild and one would have to have something at the back of your mind that there is a slim possibility that you could come all this way and not be successful!!! Holy crackers it would be disappointing all the same though.
I do also need to make a special mention to Lil. Lil fell over 4 nights ago at Lake Bunyonyi walking down the hill to set up her tent. Her foot swelled to a balloon, luckily we have 2 nurses on board and they pretty much bandaged it, elevated it and drugged her up. 3 days later there was no improvement so when we got to Ruhengheri, so went to the hospital and got it x-rayed and she has a small fracture – her gorilla visit looked doomed. But we found out you can pay porters to carry you up in a stretcher for 200AUD. So after a lot of thinking, coming all this was and already paying 500AUD for the permit, you could NOT go. Lucky she is a tiny thing; imagine the porters trying to stretcher me up the mountain? They would have a hernia. Apparently they go on the ‘easy’ track and this is also the one the oldies go on so they don’t have a heart attack I guess. From her photos it looked like there were 6 porters carrying Lil, but at the end of the day, she also got to see the gorilla’s which was awesome for her.
Dinner was in town at a local hotel set up buffet style. It was nice to have dinner out, even though Liz’s cooking has been more than I could have ever expected, to pop on a change of clothes and some mascara on the eyes was a pretty awesome feeling, considering back home I was a make-up gal through and through. The hotel then opened the nightclub just for us, but I have to say in a massive BIG room and only 16 of us in it, it just didn’t quite have the atmosphere for this little bunny to energize through. I stayed for a drink and then walked home with Astrid and Emma S. I looked like a piker, but I didn’t care, I was super tired and had an upset stomach and needed to get back to mission control. As it worked out, most people came back after an hour or so and a few of the diehard’s stayed out till 10.30pm, a mammoth effort since we had been up since 5.30am!!!!!!!!
