12/29/13: UGANDA - MGAHINGA GORILLA NATIONAL PARK!
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| Head Silverback |
To our surprise, we were driven to Kisoro, the home of one group of Ugandan gorillas, in a large car with four Rwandan Christian ministers (including Father Gerard) and one of their wives, all headed towards attending a service and meeting with their Ugandan adviser. Easy! Border crossing was simple and easy. Yehudah put down we'd be in the country for 40 days and the official told him he put us in for 60!
This is our first day on our own, so we are trying to figure out what to do. Gorillas or golden monkeys? It's cheaper here, but still unbelievably expensive. Our Lake Bunyoni contact has been unreachable, but we managed to speak briefly on a borrowed phone with Fred from Kampala, a Couchsurfing connection, who will meet us somewhere soon. We will speak to him this afternoon. Meanwhile, we found a place to have a very big breakfast, more of a brunch and now are quite full. Only two meals today!
We had a good conversation with a group of German travelers eating lunch at the same place. They had already visited gorillas, traveled to both nearby parks, so we enjoyed speaking with them. Their hired car was being fixed. The guy talked with Yehudah about Genocide and the Holocaust and he had some interesting books he recommended. One was by a linguist who analyzed the origins of it from the standpoint of the Nazi's manipulation of language. His partner was into birds and was very excited about the different kingfishers they had seen. Yehudah then scoped out accommodations while I stayed back with all our luggage, hoping the internet would work, but it never did.
Our first choice was full. It had wi-fi! So we wound up at The Virunga Hotel, which was clean enough and had toilet and shower plus two single beds with nets for $20. The disconcerting thing was that when we returned after dark, one of the hotel watchmen was drunk. Not a good sign!
AND the biggest decision was to sign up for gorilla tracking the following morning. We were told two other people had signed up, but, as it turned out, they never showed up. This area has one family of ten gorillas - the giant Silverback leader, 4 other Silverbacks, two mommas, one baby, two juveniles. It costs $750 per person to track gorillas in Rwanda, where there are 10 families, some with 20 members in each. In Uganda the cost is $500 in high season, which this is. So, a giant splurge, but, hey, we will only be here once. If we don't see the gorillas, they reimburse 75%. Here's a good website with more information: http://gorillatrekking.travel/content/mgahinga-gorilla-national-park-uganda. This is what this website says about our Gorilla group:
Gorilla Family in Mgahinga National Park
The Park has only one Gorilla Family named Nyakagezi Group. The group is open for tourism but as per now, it is currently not bookable at Uganda Wildlife Authorities as it has a very large range and keeps on crossing from Uganda to Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo. It is composed of 9 members with 3 Silverbacks. (maybe this was written before the baby was born...as we were told there were 10 members of this group!)
In the evening we walked around looking for some lunch food and found crackers and sardines. Then we chanced on a new hotel on the Main Street just opening, managed by a German and Hungarian couple. They had curries and a ratatouille with grilled chicken. We shared, as usual. The ratatouille was the better dish. And their wi-fi was slow but it worked! We stayed there for hours, Yehudah reading our East Africa book, me working on our blog.
12/30/13: GORILLAS!
Someone knocked on our door at 5:30 am to tell us that breakfast was ready. We got all ready to go, had breakfast at 6 am, parked our bags at the unlocked reception desk (gotta trust) then the driver arrived at 6:45 am and off we went.
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| Trailhead |
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| Little hydrax, relative of elephant |
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The Gorilla Crew - you could hire one of the guys sitting to carry your stuff,
support you if needed |
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| Che Guevara Guerrila TeeShirt in Xtra Large |
By 7:15 am we arrived at the beginning of the hike via a road that was more like a dry river bed, passing through multiple small towns. Our guide, Dan, met us at the bottom. The first part of the hike was pretty steep. You first go up to a meet-up spot on the porch of a small building, with a great shirt of a guerrilla wearing a Che Guevara hat on display, plus numerous small wooden gorillas. The second pair didn't show, so Dan briefed us about what to expect and off we went.
It took about an hour and a half of walking up steep paths, narrow areas with rocks, stopping periodically to see birds, taking photos of wildflower and birds, drink sips of water, and feeling the sun getting hotter and making us quite sweaty.
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| Field Rock |
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| Avocadoes |
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Farm Field of Potatoes and Wheat
The trackers, 3 of them, plus their armed guard, met us when we reached the gorilla spot. The first thing we heard was some creature tearing leaves in the brush, then a loud growling noise - the head Silverback charging another Silverback, we don't know why.
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| First view of Gorilla Shit |
Dan prepared us again, we left all our gear with Michael, our guard, who carried an automatic weapon (in case we met an elephant or a buffalo ( we saw plenty of fresh buffalo patties on the trail but no buffalo and no elephants (shucks!)) and just brought along our small camera. I am sure people bring super good camera gear here and hire a porter to carry it all. We were about to spend one hour with the gorilla family!
The first gorilla we saw was tucked away in a bush - Love's his name - the smallest Silverback. Dan drew back the brush and so exposed Love pretty completely. We were maybe 8 ft away from him, much closer than the 20 ft. we were told was the closest we would be allowed to come. He just sat in his spot, occasionally scratching, turning his head, looking at us but not particularly interested.
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| Love 1 |
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| Love 2 |
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| Love 3 |
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| Love 4 |
We descended through the brush, with our guides helping, to come to a landing where the main elder Silverback, one momma and a juvenile were right in front of us, by maybe 20 ft.
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We took this photo to show how close we were standing
to the Head Silverback, his wife and adolescent |
Farther down to the right across a ravine and off beyond approach but hanging onto trees eating, was a momma with the baby on her back! The baby sauntered off her back, climbing in a tree, falling out of the tree, scampering around. The momma stayed for quite awhile eating from the bush. This was all in clear view.
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Momma with baby on her back - seen across ravine
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Then a juvenile came along and also ate in the area. Mostly eating leaves, but there were some delicious ants they feasted on as they scraped off the bark.
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Young Silverback, eating across Ravine
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The baby was pretty nonchalant. Then the baby climbed back on its momma's back and off they all went.
Meanwhile the huge elder Silverback (37 yrs. old) was lounging on his back, the momma and juvenile snuggling, picking stuff off the area around his private parts (or at least that's where their heads were.) He would sit up occasionally, roll over, lie back down, not paying much attention to us.
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Grooming
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| Adolescent |
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| More Grooming |
Another Silverback came close and the guides thought he wanted to pass, so we made room, but instead he stayed in the bush right next to us, eating, out of sight. We could hear him right there, very close. His name is Prophet.
You only get an hour with the gorillas, so Dan told us we had 10 more minutes. Nothing much was happening and I felt ready to leave. But then I decided to step just a bit in front of where we were and crouch down. Throughout our time I was mimicking behavior - scratching, making sounds the trackers were making - grunts, other occasional sounds, but mostly they were speaking among each other in their native language.
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| Here comes the Juvenile! |
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| Our hands come close |
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| He sits right next to me and watches my hands |
Then, magic happened. The juvenile approached me. Dan told me not to be scared, that he wouldn't harm. I put my hand out, with my palm down and bent. He came over, grabbed my arm and pulled me to come closer to the group. He repeated this a few times. Then he tried to pull off my scarf, which was securely on my head. His strong leathery hands were powerful but my scarf and I stayed put.
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| He mimicked me |
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| Is he looking at my lips? |
Then Yehudah came over and offered his hand. The Juvenile started pulling his arm, one of his fingernails caught his forearm (a mark he's carrying with distinction and fortunately didn't get infected), grabbed Yo's hat off his head which he grabbed back in just a reflex action. (We're still wondering if he would be wearing the hat if he'd gotten it.) Also, did he want to play with us, or, perhaps join him in picking bugs off his Daddy?)
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| Pulling Yo's shirt! |
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| Mimicking behavior up close! |
Then Yehudah's golden moment came: the juvenile mimicked Yo's posture, placing his head on his arm and staring straight into Yehudah's eyes, 12 inches away! I wish I had had the idea to request that Yo gave Dan the camera on video to get it all, but at least Yo handed the camera to them and they captured some of Yo's best moments with the juvenile.
Dan was so pleased with me and my attracting the juvenile that he told us we got five more minutes because we had done so well. The elder Silverback sat up and looked me straight in the eyes. The momma never really engaged. Dan told us we would receive special certificates because we had done so well, but I think that everyone receives these certificates.
We passed by the Silverback who had been eating in the bush and saw him very clearly, eating leaves.
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| Prophet eating leaves |
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| More Gorilla Shit |
This was an amazing experience. Close encounter of the primate kind. On the trail Dan cut off the type of leaf stem they were eating for us to taste. It was yummy, very soft and with a liquid, tart taste.
It poured on the return hike back to the meet-up spot, so we put on our raincoats and took out our small umbrellas, but our packs got soaked and our pants as well. Dan and I exchanged stories, mine of the eagle and the hummingbird, his, the chameleon and the elephant. In both, the smaller animal tricks the larger one and wins the contest. Here's a photo of the drenched guard:
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| Drenched Guard |
Dan presented us with our certificates at the meet-up spot once we changed into dry clothing. We took a photo together:
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| Us with Dan, the Gorilla Guide |
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| Gorilla Rock |
On the drive back, two big trucks blocked the road. One was still being loaded with sacks of potatoes. Our security man was in the car with her and got irate when they wouldn't move out of the way. Yehudah got out of the car to take a picture which he never got to do. It seemed like all the workers reacted negatively and one was about to throw a potato at him when he ducked back inside. Quite the scene!
Back in "civilization" we retrieved our stuff, Yo exchanged more money, dealt with getting our new SIM card registered so we can use the phone (this proved daunting and full of red tape) and we finally looked for a minibus but needed to hire a private car to get to a town 1 1/2 hrs farther towards our next destination, Kabale. The car waited to round up another passenger, and, in inimical African fashion, 4 women with two babies smushed into the car, plus a young fellow shared the driver's seat. 8 folks in small car! It was hard to understand how the driver could pass every other vehicle on a very curvy mountain road. The women were quite well dressed and got off at one end of Lake Bunyoni by a field where people were harvesting potatoes.
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| Bus place in Kibale |
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| Boulders along the road |
We are now at Hotel Queen's, the recommendation of a tour guide from the last town. All our clothing is drying, eaten dinner, Yehudah is off to bed, and I am finishing up writing about today. I have edited all the photos and there are some wonderful videos. These will probably require some editing when we get home. We have communicated with a CouchSurfing contact, Fred, who is a principal of a school who lives in Kampala. He has 4 wheel drive and is meeting us tomorrow around noon in a town closer to Queen Elizabeth Park, our next destination. Good night! What an amazing day!
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