How many things have I been able to cross off of my (ever-expanding) bucket-list these past few years? Well, I get to cross off one more after last weekend: a trip to Uganda to see the endangered mountain gorillas. And thanks to a fortuitously timed trip from Webb and Jeff I was even able to do it guilt-free. I went with my good friend (and fellow Kili climber from last year), Carolynn. She also has three kids and they are in all the same classes as Tierney, Ashlyn, and Anderson, so we were probably just as excited for 4 days away as we were about the gorilla trek.
After a short hour and a half flight to Entebbe we took the afternoon to head to a mall in Kampala. It was like a ‘real’ mall…bookstores, restaurants, etc. We bought a few fun goodies for the kids and ate dinner before we headed back to our very basic hotel in Entebbe.
We got picked up at 8:00 am for our drive to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest (an Unesco World Heritage site) where we’d start our trek the next morning. We were told the drive should take 8-9 hours. Not exactly. It was really 11.5. We had a couple of nice stops including a stop at the equator. (I had no idea that this trip was going to bring me to the Northern Hemisphere.) As we approached the mountains of Western Uganda we got more and more excited.
Since the drive took longer than expected, we arrived at our lodge after dark (after a scary, wet, muddy, slippery drive up a steep hill with a cliff into a lake on the left). We were now at the very edge of our time zone and the sun set much later than in Arusha. In fact, my phone was picking up it’s signal from Rwanda and was an hour off the whole time we were at the lodge.
We left the lodge at 6:30 in the morning (in the dark) to meet our guides for our trek. It was a gorgeous drive in the mist up to Bwindi. Due to a missed turn we missed most of the briefing before we took off hiking. A hike that I had underestimated.
There are six habituated groups of gorillas in the park and we were tracking the Nshongi group. We met up with 5 other tourists and started our trek at about 9 am (with 3 guides, a police officer and 3 porters). What started out as a gentle hike along a well-marked (albeit safari ant covered) trail quickly turned into a bush-whacking, straight up-hill, muddy climb. Gorilla trackers had been sent out about an hour and a half before us (at first light) to try and find the Nshongi group. Our ranger was in constant contact with them to help us find the best route to the gorillas. In theory, the trackers know where the gorillas nest the night before and it’s just a matter of finding them again in the morning. But, these big animals move fast and can quickly be far away from their previous night’s nest. As we were reminded frequently, these were mountain gorillas and didn’t care to stick to designated trails. We were hiking through mud, stinging nettles, and vines that seemed to grab your ankles behind the guides who were using machetes to make a “trail” for us (Tierney and I are reading Harry Potter right now and I kept thinking of the whomping willow as these vines seems to grab me). After only two and half hours (which we later learned is really great), we started hearing the very loud grunts and hollers of the gorillas. It was so exciting!
After a few more minutes were were told to remove our packs, take out our cameras, and prepare for our encounter with the gorillas. We are limited to one hour with them which seemed like such a long time, but turned out to go by surprisingly quickly. Our first views were just of rustling bushes and a few more hollers, but the guides brought us closer…much closer to this group of about nine gorillas. The first one that I saw was an adolescent that was up in a tree, but our head guide again pulled us closer and parted the bushes with his sickle-like tool for my first, up-close encounter. This adult female gorilla quickly charged toward me grunting and pounding the ground with her palm. I did what I was supposed to do and slowly crouched down to the ground and avoided eye contact. The guides all quickly laughed and said that she was just teasing me and showing me who was in charge…I never had any doubt. They are huge with giant teeth. We spent the next hour trying to peek through bushes to get glimpses of them. Mostly they didn’t care that we were there and just sat and ate (they eat up to 75 lbs of mostly leaves a day). Occasionally, I think if we got too close, they just slowly backed away into a clump of bushes. The forest was very dense and it was very hard to see them when they did this.
Can you believe how close I am?!
The Silverback. The head male named for the silver (grey) hair along his back.
Porters and guide taking a break in the bush while we watched the gorillas.
Mostly relaxing and eating, but check out those teeth! Pretty amazing for a primarily vegetarian diet.
And a minute video that I like because Carolynn was able to show how close I was and also because she caught a giant yawn where you can get a good look at her teeth, but mostly she just sits and eats.
Carolynn’s video of one of the gorillas
We feel very fortunate to have had this experience. There are only about 800 mountain gorillas left in the world and they do not survive in captivity, so this is really the only way to see them. We hiked for only about a total of 4 hours (plus an hour with the gorillas). We were very lucky and were back at our car around 2:00 and having a drink on our porch at 3:30. Several hours after we got back another group (tracking a different gorilla group) arrived back at the lodge after 9 hours of hiking and we heard that a group the previous day didn’t even get back to their cars until 8 pm. I can’t imagine; even our 4 hour hike was challenging and I’m pretty sure that a guy we saw at the briefing session in the morning (tracking an even different group) did not have a good day wearing the loafers that he had on.
We made our way along Matunda Lake back to our lodge. This was our first real sight of it since we had arrived in the dark the night before and left before first light that morning. What a gorgeous setting. Views of the volcanoes and looking toward Rwanda and the Congo. We sat on our porch, drinking a beer, enjoying the view, and watching lot of birds and even an otter swim by. Lovely. Not only did I get to have a nice hike and see mountain gorillas, but I also got to drink a beer uninterrupted while reading a book!
Instead of just turning around and driving 11 hours straight back to Entebbe the next day, we had adjusted the tour company’s planned itinerary and asked to spend a night at Lake Mburo National Park which is about halfway back to Entebbe (thanks to some good advice from a friend who used to live in Uganda). I think that this was the right thing to do. We had another afternoon of relaxing and reading at Arcadia Cottages. This did mean another early morning, but when you go to bed before 9:00, it’s really not too bad. On the way back our driver pulled over for some freshly roasted goat. Yum, yum. What could be better than freshly roasted goat brought directly to your car window? (In case you really were wondering, we enjoyed our cheese sandwiches and roasted chicken in our packed lunches. I’ve had decent roasted goat before, but I’m pretty sure that this wasn’t going to be it.)
Check out the Ugandan cows!
And quite possibly the best ad I’ve seen in awhile (ever?). This was just outside of Kampala on the way to Entebbe. Gotta love African advertising.
