Suluman, our driver from Matoke Tours picked me and Claudia up from the lake and took us even higher up into the Rwenzori mountains to Ruhija where we would track the Oruzogo family of gorillas in the rainforest of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. The drive alone was AWESOME (and scary- thank God for four wheel drive- teetering at the edge of cliffs while heading to our camp grounds was C-RAZY!)
The Gorilla Friends Lodge was so cool! We slept in a brand new (yay- no mold this time) tent with cots that were basically set up along the edge of the cliffs overlooking the rainforest- now that's a great view and a great way to have a coffee on your own private deck outside your tent in the morning!
Our guide, David, informed us of the newly habituated gorilla group we would be following- it has only been since june of this year that these gorillas have been exposed to "whites"... hmmm...should I be scared?
There are 780 gorillas in the entire park which includes the gorillas from the Virungas in the Congo and the Parc de Volcans in Rwanda. In Uganda's Bwindi park there are 340 gorillas, 10 families of which I believe are habituated, the others wild. Because their DNA is so similar to ours they can catch illness' from us very easily so people should not track them if they are unwell (its a good thing I was getting over my cold). Other than claudia amd myself, there was a guy, Keith from Germany, four people from Sweden and two from Austria that joined us on our rigorous trek throughout the mountainside rainforest. It was definitely not what I expected. I guess I had always envisioned the gorillas to be in a flatter area eating, grooming eachother, being lazy, etc. Yeah right. After about an hour and a half of hiking, getting tangled up in vines, slipping and sliding on the steep slopes, avoiding gorilla dung pointed out by the local trackers, macheti-ing our way through brush and avoiding stinging nettle, we came upon the Oruzogo group. The silverback charged at us twice (and I think the one Swedish girl almost pooped her pants) but there's no where to go on these slopes except DOWN, and its not like your supposed to run anyways! One of the blackbacked males however, was posing for our cameras. Since they are a newly habituated group of gorillas, they moved around a lot so we were chasing after them for an extra hour and a half after finding them. It was well worth it though!
Most memorable gorilla trackking moments: looking up overhead in the bushes and catching a gorilla just staring at me and observing me as the rest of the group was below me scrambling to take pics of the more visible gorillas; the growling noises the silverback made at us and our close proximity to the gorillas; and lastly I, along with Keith, were the only two to catch a gorilla beating his chest and signaling to the gorilla beside him to get moving. So awesome I'll never forget this experience!
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