They're Called Mountain Gorillas For A Reason

So today I was priveledged enough to spend one hour with our closest relatives, the lowland mountain gorillas. It was truly amazing!

Our guide, Zipporah and 2 armed guard escorts

We started off our day with a briefing on the rules of gorilla tracking and separated into 3 groups. The area of Bwindi National Park I was at has 3 groups of gorillas who are habituated to human presence and 8 people can spend an hour with each group daily. Trackers go out very early in the morning to the GPS location where they left the gorillas last the day before and follow their tracks from there. Then the groups of tourists follow their direction on the way to travel to find them. It ensures an almost 100% success rate and greatly reduces the time it takes to find the gorillas.

At the top of a mountain. Still more to climb though

We had some challenges today reaching our group. The day started with a very steep climb for an hour that really drained an older gentleman who was part of our group. He was quite discouraged and required our entire group to continue supporting him and making sure he knew that we weren't in a hurry. The climbing was tough. Very steep hills going both up and down. Our guide, Zipporah was fantastic and made sure that we had a great experience. The last half hour of our hike was entirely off trails with the guards cutting a path with machete.

It was lots of work, but when the first gorilla came crashing through the underbrush to check us out, it was all worth it. My heart felt as though it grew instantly when I saw him. One of the other guys said that he felt very choked up. It was truly incredible to watch them move, eat and watch us. The family we tracked has 6 members including an 8 month old baby (who slept the entire time we were there but was still adorable).

After a 6 hour mountain forest hike and a 4 hour drive on windy, bumpy roads I am signing off a happy and tired traveller