Gorilla Treking

Internet access in Uganda stinks. What would one expect. At least I’ve had it. It can take upwards of 20-30 minutes to load one page.

Day 6

We made it to Kampala a large city of a little more than a million to replenish food stock and stage for our drive towards a gorilla trek. We pull into a supermarket complex and I find myself wandering through the isles of a very modern store larger than any super Walmart or Sam’s Club I’ve ever seen. For a moment I felt like I was back in the states and not in Africa. A nice surprise.

Since we are in a somewhat civilized city I take the time to find a Chiropractor and end up at local hospital. On the taxi ride to the hospital numerous impressions ran through my head of what weird scenario I might be entering. The experience turned out to be quite pleasant though. Luckily the hospital was clean neat and appeared very modern from the outside, lobby, and rooms I saw. The admission process was fast and efficient. The doctor turns out is the first chiropractor to practice in Uganda and there are only three in the entire country. He’s a native but was educated in the UK. Maybe it’s because I was a foreigner or maybe he’s that slow, I’m not sure. He spent an hour chatting with me exchanging information about a varied array of topics and it felt more like I was having a conversation with a buddy than at a hospital waiting for an adjustment. Anyway, it’s been a huge blessing to get adjusted and my back has been thanking me for days.

Day 7 – 8

We drove for 12 hours over bumpy teeth chattering roads to reach Lake Buyoni in the southwestern area of Uganda near the Rwanda and Congo borders.

Lake Buyoni is stunning to take in. The mountainous area is covered by lush tropical green plants. The lake is fairly narrow with a snaky coastline creating numerous picturesque views with a dozen or more small islands scattered throughout the lake. At 6500 ft deep it’s hard to image the underwater terrain when it appears at it’s widest it’s probably only a quarter mile.

Sam and I rent a Mokoro to explore the lake further. A Mokoro is a large tree trunk hallowed out to make a canoe. We quickly find out sitting in a log refines ones balance as it’s extremely tippy still. Paddling straight proves to be just as challenging as the bottom of the canoe is whatever shape the log is and the water flow makes us go in left hand circles. While others in our group give up trying, Sam and I figure out a balancing paddling act which produces a reasonably straight line and head for one of the nearby islands with the highest peak.

The island is green mostly with a variety of crops farmed by locals living on the island. It’s astonishing we are in an extremely remote area with limited facilities to begin with and there are people even more isolated living in mud huts completely self sufficient. As we hike towards the peak cutting through terraced fields three kids approach cautiously. It’s cute and endearing as they appear to be excited yet somewhat scared. They’re giggling and speaking in hushed whispering hiding behind bushes sneaking peaks at us. Waving and saying hi returns laughter and waves. We’re as much an attraction for them as they are to us. Sam has a chocolate bar and offers them some. They step out from their hiding spot and cautiously creep toward us and I feel like we are trying to coax a wild animal with food to come closer. Once close enough they snatch a piece of candy and immediately retreat. It’s obvious they are not sure what it is as they place a square in the palm of there hands and lick it with delight disappearing quickly. We summit the island peak a few minutes later to absorb a wondrous vista and a few minutes later more kids show up. Uh oh, the words out and we end up divvying the last of the candy to the half dozen kids far more courageous than the initial three.

The group splits up and goes to two different locations so that we might all be able to go on a gorilla trek in the next couple days. Myself and four others head to Nkuringo an exceptionally remote village another three hours from Lake Buyoni. To get here we pile into a small mini van and drive over boulder filled roads covered in a powdery dust as fine as flour. By the time we arrive so much dust has seeped into the van there is a half inch covering our bags and I’m covered from head to toe and look like I’ve crawled out of a vat of brown flour.

Day 9 -10

Our itinerary since the start has been laid out so that we can make it to the remote Biwindi National Park, known as the Impenetrable Forest. This forest is home to half the worlds population of mountain gorillas. There are around 700 gorillas world wide and around 320 live here.

Gorillas live in family packs with one dominate male and move through the forest with their leader. There are 30 different families within Biwindi 8 of which are tracked daily. The other 22 are tracked with a census every 5 years by the Ugandan government. The government sells permits to tourist allowing small groups each day to go along with the trackers to visit the gorillas. Hence why our group was split up so that everyone could do a trek to a different family. Gorillas have been heavily hunted and poached and the program is a conservation effort funded by the likes of me and other tourist willing to shell over the hefty price of $500, by far the most expensive activity I’ll be doing all year. The program was started in the early 2000’s and they have documented a 17% increase in population since that time.

They send a couple trackers into the forest ahead of us to locate where the gorillas where sited the day before. Their job is to track the gorillas movement through footprints, droppings, left over food, and broken branches and report back to our guides so we can cut through the forest more direct to get to them. A half hour into our hike we quickly discover why it’s called the impenetrable forest. We’re climbing, not hiking, nearly vertical slopes with 80-90 degree inclines covered in dense jungle foliage. Branches, head high weeds, vines, and other foliage are interlaced creating a cobweb like barrier everywhere you turn. It’s so thick there isn’t a sign of the sky. Fortunately, our guides have machetes and hack a slow arduous path so we can climb, pull, crawl, and or wiggle our way through.

Two hours into the hike/climb we’re exhausted, dripping sweat, and I can feel my heartbeat racing from all the excursion. We’ve located the Nshongi gorilla family, a pack of 34 gorillas, the largest family in the forest. At first we can hear some of them grunting and rustling bushes. They’re only a few feet away yet the forest is so thick we can’t see them. As we move closer my first sighting is a baby gorilla sliding down a tree like a fireman sliding down a fire pole. We continue to move closer as the guides chop pull and do whatever they can to remove some of the forest cover from where one of the gorillas is sitting picking and eating leaves. We spend the next hour and half crawling around pulling back branches and foliage to get a good view of any of the gorillas. While we’re only sometimes a couple feet away there are branches and vines interlaced through every view making it very difficult for any of us to get good photographs. (fortunately between all of us we ended up with a few good ones). On a couple occasions we get too close and the gorillas charge. The silverback leader roars nashing it’s teeth pounding the ground with its fist only a few feet in front of us while Jarrod who was in front ducks and runs back several feet, just what he’s not supposed to do. We laugh and make fun of him as our guides had instructed us if they charge to stand still and not look them in the eye. A few moments later another of the larger ones stands up pounds it chest with a thunderous scream and a chilling fear runs down your spine

The second day in Nkuringo the other part of our group goes on the gorilla trek and has a completely different experience. The wonders of nature. They only have to trek about 20 minutes and find the gorillas in an open field and not covered by vines, no charging or large roars, just the family sitting around doing nothing for an hour, however it provided them with wonderful photo ops. Thus when I’m able to post I’ll probably use some of theirs.

While the other group was off trekking we go for a drive and randomly stop in a small remote village looking for something to eat. We order cokes and some bread like balls available at the ram-shackled store here. While sitting outside we become the attraction of this village and every local stands a few feet away looking at us strangely in a standoffish way. We notice one guy is working carrying rocks on a his head from a pile down the hill and is dropping them into a trench dug next to the store building placing the foundation for an expansion to the building. We jump in to help and start carrying rocks on our heads and the mood changes to laughter and fun. Next thing you know the other dozen or so men standing around watching us and one guy work join in as we’ve shamed the village into helping and it becomes a competition to see who can carry the biggest heaviest rock on their head. An hour later what would have taken the guy all day to do by himself the foundation trenches are filled. We’re the hit of a lifetime for this village and get pictures with everyone. Having gotten their address, I wish I could be there when they receive the pictures I’m going to mail to them. I’m pretty sure they’ll be the only photographs anyone in the village has.

Day 11-13

Now that our gorilla treks are complete it’s a long haul of hundreds of miles of driving to backtrack and get back to Nairobi to drop off some folks and pick up others to set off again. The past couple days have been filled with 12 hours in the truck and it’s given me the chance to catch up with writing. We stopped briefly at the equator to get pics standing in two hemispheres and moved on to spend the night in Kampala and in a beautiful campsite in Eldoret, Kenya. We’re now on our way to Lake Naivasha for the night and tomorrow will be back in Nairobi.

Day 14

Lake Naivasha is filled with over a thousand hippos and we took a boat ride to explore the lake and I had the wonderful opportunity to see dozens of hippos up close and personal from singles hanging alone to packs of a dozen or more.

I’m now back in Nairobi for a couple down days to do luandry and wait for new folks to show up before we take off on safari to Masi Mari