Gorillas in the Damp
Trip Start
Sep 08, 2007
1
50
68
Trip End
Apr 30, 2008
Ruhengeri,
Rwanda
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
The Gorillas- SOOOOOO cool, but soooooo wet (it POURED!)! We got to Ruhengeri (about two hours north from Gisenyi) and checked into the lodge we were staying at right near the Volcanoes National Park. We managed to get in on a hired vehicle with two aussies and two belgians, so it was very cheap
En Route to Gisenyi
. We ended up spending the evening chatting with the aussies mostly and got to know them pretty well and had a blast in the meantime. There was also a really cool thunderstorm that night (little did we know the rain it foretold!).The next day we all piled into our hired SUV and headed over to the National Park HQ to be briefed by our guide. We had been told we'd be tracking a relatively new family of about 15 gorillas (mostly adult females and babies, and one silverback male). We each got a walking stick (with carved gorilla heads) and began our walk into the Park. After only about 45 minutes of walking, our guide, who was in constant contact with the trackers of our gorilla family, related to us that our family had in fact been fighting with another gorilla family and so had moved from where they had been (we're still not sure why we didn't know this BEFORE walking there already!). So we turned around and ended up strolling through fields for a good two hours before re-entering the park at another point. Then it was a fair amount of upward hiking into the jungle-like park (I'm really not sure if it was officially jungle or not, but it was pretty dense!) until finally we were given the signal to drop our bags and prepare to meet our gorillas!
We came across the first female sitting very close to our path - she was just sitting there chomping on some leaves. A very short distance away we spotted another! They were just amazing to watch - you'd almost swear you were on an amusement park ride and they were mechanical - that's how unreal it was to be seeing them! We were quickly motioned by our guides to keep going - and glad we were that we did! We came upon a bit of a clearing where the whole lot of them were chilling out - with one of the really young ones hanging from a vine and playing with another! This apparently is what they did during this time of the day - a socail siesta in between meals (they eat a lot)
Landscapes near Lake Kivu
. Then they started to move away from us, which we all realized later that it was probably them sensing the coming storm.Following them a bit further into the foliage, we could all feel the few drops coming down, ALL of us hoping it was just a passing sprinkle - NOPE! It started to come down, then REALLY come down, then it came down in TORRENTS! The gorillas had all taken shelter under the trees, and we were all just standing there staring at them. One of the trackers motioned me over to where he was sitting under a tree, and as I sat with him, I realized I was staring at the back of a gorilla less than 2 metres away! She kept looking back at me and chomped grass as we both tried to stay as dry as possible (I failed miserably at that). We must have sat there for 20 minutes, just gazing at each other - Allison thought it was hilarious how we were the more evolved of the two species and yet we just sat in the rain getting soaked staring at these 'lesser' animals!
The rain seemed to let up a little, and we were starting to run low on time (you're only allowed so much time with the gorillas once you find them) so we moved up a bit and came up on the Silver Back. He definitely earned his position as the dominant male - the beast was HUGE! I'd say he must have been definitely taller than me and he was just sitting there brooding - clearly not impressed with the rain. A number of females and young ones had gathered around him as well, trying to stay dry. At one point, a little way down the path, and as we began making our back, another one came bounding up and pounded its chest a bit (literally pounded its chest!) and ran right by us - clearly trying to show off
More landscapes
. I even almost tripped over myself as two of them ran RIGHT by my legs (so much the 7 metre distance we were supposed to give them!).Eventually our time was done, and we had to begin making the trek back out of the park (and a trek it was - SOOOO much mud and rain made for very unpleasant hiking!). But even though I was soaked TO the bone and anxious to get back to our lodge, I was just so awe-struck by the beasts we had watched - a little bittersweet when you consider how much in danger their species survival is (this really is becoming the extinction tour!). And while we did lament at paying a rather hefty sum to be incredibly uncomfortable for about 6 hours, we all agreed it was totally worth it and that the experience was very difficult to put into words (although I seem to have put into a great many here in this entry!).
The biggest downside to this story was that by the end of it my stomach and digestion system really was starting to turn against me - I won't get into the gory details of it, but I was quite upset with my stomach after I'd been paying it so many compliments for not going sour - and then it betrays me! Judas!
We got back to the lodge, got clean and dry - although my shoes weren't going to be dry for some time and REEKED of something like swamp. Then we headed back into town and got a mini-bus with our new Aussie friends and headed back to Kigali for our last couple of nights in Rwanada.
