Gorillas

I know that it has been a long time, but I'm finally back, and now I have so much to say. This particular story comes from back in July... hope you enjoy


After lunch on Friday we drove up to Ruhengeri(Musanze). We stayed at the Hotel Gorillas. Oh My. So Nice. I had TV and a hot shower. I had forgot how white my skin could be.
Saturday morning. We left at 6.15 to drive up to the national park. Once we arrived at the station we then waited around a bit for everyone to arrive. They then divided us up into groups and brought us to our guides. Our group was the 5 of us and 2 Belgian women. We met our guide, Patience, and he then briefed us on what we were about to experience. Then we all piled back into our cars and drove off. Of the 14 families of gorillas, only 7 are visited by tourists, the others are for research.. Each group goes to a different family. In order to know where they are, there are gorilla trackers that start early in the morning so then they can walkie-talkie our guides so that we can find the gorillas as easily as possible. Before we even started hiking we first had about a 45 minute drive along the bumpiest, rockiest road ever. The scenery was great, the "African massage," not so great. While we were driving we were going through little 'communities.' As our cars drove through all the little children would turn out. Most of the children had little pieces of paper with some sort of gorilla drawing on them. They were trying to sell them to us. Obviously at some point someone must have stopped and bought one, because all the little children would come running when they saw our cars a-coming.
Once we came to the end of the road, we then had about a 15 minute walk to the edge of the park.The entire park is surrounded by a stone wall. Once we climb the wall we are in. Along with us and our guides were two army men sent in case of wild animals, eg buffalo, come at us, since they have guns.
We had about a 45 minute 'walk' to wear the trackers had spied the family of gorillas we were going to see. It was pretty steep. Not a horribly long walk, but the walk was hard-core steep. My first spying of a gorilla came when the young Belgain woman in front of mepointed one out in a tree. Of course we did exactly what we were not supposed to do,point. We continued a little bit, and it ends up that at the base of the tree where we saw our first gorilla was the family of them. We had two juvinile boys wrestling for us. They were pretty good. I would think a few high school boys in the US could learn a thing or two from them on the mats.
In the background was the Silverback, but we couldn't really see him that well because he was just chilling on the ground. To be honest I was a little relieved.. this meant that our group of camera clicking humans was not distrubing him enough.
On second thought this does not really surprise me when you think about how the park works. Every day for an hour they are exposed to crazed tourists, so it must become normal, somehow.
Right before our time was up with the gorillas they switched our postion so we could see from another angle. Thats when we saw a mother. Our guide pointed out the mother and the baby, and honestly my first thought was that I must be an idiot because I really am not seeing anything, but then I realized, that tiny thing laying on the mother, the thing that is about the size of a mini-football is a baby gorilla. Holy cow. It was crazy. Honestly I knew that a baby would be small, but in comparision to the mother it really was shocking.
On the way back down, it took about 20 minutes. We did see how much of climb we had done on the way in though.

SO, the afternoon. After we did gorilla trekking on Saturday we went back to our hotel, took showers, and then had lunch. We then decided to walk around Ruhengeri(Musanze) a little bit. Since I had already been there before I felt comfortable going with my family. I even took them through the market and off the beaten road. Overall I think it was a good time. They really got to experience what being a Muzungu is like, cause 5 of us walking around sure brought out the stares alright.

Now. My HEAVENLY experience. And no I am not mincing words when I use that description. I am pretty sure that I used all the hot water that the hotel had to offer. Gosh, one cannot believe all the dirt that comes off with hot water in comparision with cold water..haha.

Then, Sunday morning we were off to trek gorillas yet again. This time we went to the family with the english translation of a name 'Lucky.' I would try to describe to you how we got to the family, but I honestly do not think that you would believe me if I told you.But here it goes anyway: After walking through a forrest of bambo, we then realized that we were on the edge of a ravine type thing. The gorillas were at the bottom of the ravine. Essentially it required some classy bottom sliding down bushes..haha.. I'm serious.
This hour that we spent with the gorillas was unbelievable. At times we were totally less than the seven meters away. I got some awesome video.

Overall the gorilla trekking was something one could never imagine. I had asked my dad if he ever thought that we would be doing something like this in our lives, but he told me that honestly when he was a boy and he learned about gorillas he never even dreamed that one day he could see them in real life, and not in a zoo. To him it wasn't even something that was dreamable, it just seemed that impossible.

If you ever find yourself in this part of the world, take it from me, it is worth every cent. You will never be able to go to a zoo ever again.