Gorillas in the Mist

It was like being in Jurassic park. I heard a soft but loud Ummmph sound and then another. There was a rustling in the bushes in front of me but nothing could be seen. Then more grunts and further leaf shaking but still nothing to see. Wow this is awesome.  We kept walking forwards.


While on our Kenya trip we caught a plane over to Entebbe in Uganda and met up with a tour operator who took us on a trip across Uganda down to the south west corner to a little town called Kisoro just a few km from the Rwanda and Congo borders. This is where the thick jungles are and the home of the large mountain gorillas. This is also the region where Dian Fossey spent a lot of her research time with the gorillas and Kisoro was the town she stayed in when not in the bush.

The drive from Entebbe to Kisoro is about 10 hour drive, it is a long haul. And this is driving at crazy speeds not the normal speeds we drive at. I had to ask the drive to slow down several times as I thought getting a little child run over was imminent or passing on blind corners was an unnecessary risk. He was a good driver though so not too many grey hairs were added. Along the drive we crossed the equator which made a good photo opportunity. Uganda is very green compared to Tanzania. Especially in the SW there were farms carved out in terraces on all the hills. The terraces make little flat areas to put crops on. The driver said ‘this was the African Alps without the snow’. It is quite hilly but they are all covered with this patch work of terraces and their various coloured crops, which made a very pretty back drop. Like a big patch work quilts thrown over the hills.

The road was poor but it was being worked on in various places by road crews . Hence once again, next year it will be a nice drive. It is great what progress happens in election years. The driver said it was the last of the main roads to seal in Uganda.

The lodge we were put in was called The Travellers Rest, run by a Dutch couple and considering where we were it was very nice indeed. There was a lot of Congolese art work and masks around, the place some quite detailed and ornate giving it this out of the ordinary appearance. Ramona finds the masks spooky.

The next morning was an early start as it was a 40 km (25 m) drive up in the mountains on a bad road to get to the park headquarters. That took about 1-1/2 hours. The Bwindi Impenetrable Forest takes 8 people per day to see a specific group of Gorillas. The idea is to hike into the jungle to find them, then once there sit with them for an hour then hike back out again. So we joined 6 other people, 2 Aussies, 2 Italians, and 2 Dutchies. After a brief talk on the day by the head guide, they gave us long walking sticks which soon became very evident why, then we headed off up into the bush.

This is no ordinary bush walk. This is the country legends are made of. It is quite steep, dense bush in most places, lots of undergrowth and tall trees. Thankfully it was dry and not wet and slippery. Earlier in the day the park sends off trackers to the last spot the gorillas were sighted at the previous day, then they start tracking them to see where they went to overnight. Once on the gorillas trail they radio back to the guide leading us and give directions of where to do. Sounds simple but doesn’t always work. The radios don’t work down in deep gullies so we have to climb to ridges to get reception. This would take an hour or so. Then the trackers have to try to describe where they are in this dense bush to the guide. All the gullies and ridges looked the same to me. The hills are so steep that is why the long sticks are needed to push in downhill before you step down using the stock as an anchor. We hiked along for about 5 hours, down in gullies, in little streams, crawling under fallen trees and vines at times. At about 3 pm it was clear that if we were to get out by dark we’d have to turn back soon. I had the impression we had not been hiking in a straight line for 5 hours, so it shouldn’t take us 5 hours to get back hopefully.

All of a sudden the guide up front said ‘stop’, the trackers were close and the gorillas were not far away coming towards us. We slipped off our packs dug out the cameras. Leaving the packs there, we started moving forward through the trees and ferns. It was like being in Jurassic park. I heard a soft but loud Ummmph sound and then another. There was a rustling in the bushes in front of me but nothing could be seen. Then more grunts and further leaf shaking but still nothing to see. Wow this is awesome. Then coming into a little low canopy covered clearing we could see the gorillas, some sitting, some on the move on the other side of the clearing. (They were oblivious to us from the 100s of previous visits to their group by other human trekkers. It takes years of visits by guides and rangers to habitualise a group of gorillas to the presence of humans.) The group we came across had about 20 or so in it. We could not see them all at any one time due to the bush. There were a couple of big silverbacks (older males that get silver hair down their backs). They are huge. Shoulders are very broad compared to a man, with a huge head on them. Wide hips too. They walk on two legs and lean on their front arms. The group had mothers, young ones and a few babies clinging to their mothers. One big silverback stopped right down in front of us just a few meters (yards) away and bent down like do a push up to put his mouth in the stream to take a drink, just like a human would. Weird and an eerie feeling to see human like behaviour from this big animal. One of the silverbacks came and sat about 4 m (yd) from me and just put his back to me. I noticed another had done a similar thing. I guessed they did that to show us they knew we were there but they didn’t care and were ignoring us. The juveniles were playing chase with each other swinging on low branches, jumping on each other. We took a lot of photos and videos. (Many of which didn’t come out unfortunately as the camera would focus instead on the braches between us and not on the gorillas. The camera experts did get some good shots however I believe.) After about 40 mins the big silverback leader sort of ordered the group to move on and the disappeared off into the bush. By now it was after 4pm. The guide said if we didn’t mind we should head back so as not to get caught in the bush in the dark. Sounded like a good idea to all of us so off we went. The first thing was to climb out of this deep gully up a steep climb for about an hour to get on top of the ridge. Ramona said if we have to do that 3 more times, we’d be very late getting out. I guessed though that once on top of a ridge the guides would stay on top and we’d walk out a lot easier than when we’d come in. Which turned out to be the case and we got back to the car a 7 pm just after dark. Then it was a 2 hr drive in the dark back to the Travellers Rest lodge. Needless to say we were trashed and tired. They had kept a late hot meal for us which was very well received.

The next day we sort of rested. We took a local guide out to a nearby lake on the Uganda-Congo border and found this guy with a canoe made from a single dug out tree. It was, in local terms a freight canoe, as it was quite long, about 8 m (25 ft). He paddled us around the lake shore a bit then we walked back through some local farms back to the start point. The guide was explaining the different crops to us. Later in the day we talked with the hotel manager about his time in Uganda and goings on in the Congo. We walked around the little town a bit to see what was there which apart for dust from road construction, wasn’t much. The 4th day was the 10 hour drive back to Entebbe.

The area around that part of Africa is called Volcanoes park as there are a string of large volcanoes on the Uganda, Rwanda and Congo border just a few km away. Beautiful symmetric mountains rising up to dominate the southern skyline. One has the triple international border on the very top of it. Guides will take climbers up there, but we needed another day had we have wanted to do that