Gorillas in the mist

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Introduction to today's journey

The more you learn about the dignity of the gorilla, the more you want to avoid people.

- Dian Fossey

Today's trek takes us high into the misty jungle in search for the legendary gorillas. We are successful and spend an hour with these amazing creatures.

Today's Journey

Distance trekked today: 6.3 kilometres.

Total distance trekked to date: 13.7 kilometres.

IT WAS pitch black when I woke up at 5:00 AM. Initially I didn’t know what had woken me up. The generator would not have yet kicked in, and it was still night outside.

Then I heard the peel of thunder, and light rain falling on the roof of the tent.

I turned over to go back to sleep. This sounded like a good indoors day. Then I realised this was the day we were going gorilla trekking.

More peels of thunder followed, each sounding closer than the last. I was still in Kilimanjaro mode even though it was now a full week since I had come off the mountain. Here I was thinking to myself I just couldn’t face endless hours of hiking in rain in the most difficult terrain all trip. I had especially saved some energy since coming off the mountain for this trek. Although this walk will be a lot shorter – a few hours, I knew it would take me into some seriously rough terrain. Having seen the terrain over the past two days, I knew this would be as rough as the terrain I did some trekking and track building at the top of the South Island of New Zealand in my latter teenage years. Although the altitude wasn’t going to be an issue here, I knew from experience that battling the rough terrain was going to be the most challenging trek this trip. I was leaving the hardest until last.

The claps of thunder were getting closer and I could now see flashes of lightning outside. The rain was falling heavier, beating down on the corrugated iron roofing above my tent. This will guarantee a very muddy trek in the steep terrain.

The rain continued falling heavily and some of the thunder was now very close, indicating ground strikes. My alarm went off, and out of habit I pressed the snooze button and rolled over again. I may as well get up, but simply didn’t have the motivation to do so. Will it continue raining like this all day, or is this similar to an Australian thunderstorm which only lasts an hour or two before coming out fine again?

The alarm went off again. 6:00. Breakfast was in just half an hour’s time, so I had to get up. I noticed the rain had started easing, but the thunder was still very loud and close. I really wasn’t looking forward to the trek today. Seeing the gorillas in the wild will be the experience of a life time, but that would be clouded by the process of trekking through the mud and rain over very difficult terrain just to get there, then of course we’d have to trek back out again. Trekking out normally meant climbing steeply downhill, the worst thing imaginable in my view.

I was very quiet over breakfast. A couple of us weren’t hungry at all. I ordered scrambled eggs and toast assuming it would be a piece of toast with scrambled eggs on it. They seemed to take a long time in the kitchen this morning, but it was welcome when my scrambled eggs did finally make an appearance. Then Emily came out again with another plate containing two pieces of toast. One was of normal thickness, and the other was huge – about four centimetres thick. I really wasn’t at all hungry, so I put the plate in the middle of the table and said anyone can help themselves to it if they want to.

The rain was still falling when we left the lodge in our small van. Everyone was well equipped for trekking, and ready to go. On our way out of the hotel, Travis told us to take a lunch box each from the reception of the dining room. They had made lunch for us. That was one rather large thing to add to my daypack, so I packed it towards the bottom.

Jeremiah took our group with Travis back along the road we had followed the day before yesterday. The road had been precarious in the dryness of the other day, but it was even more treacherous with the rain. Brown opaque water was running down the hill onto the road turning it into a bit of a quagmire. Fortunately though no slips had come down to break our only access.

We wound around the road for a long time. The tops of the almost black ridges were hidden in cloud. The gullies were all shrouded in dark mist highlighting the impenetrable forest. It truly was a miserable spectacle here. Somewhere high in the hills above us were the gorillas we were meeting today.

We turned off the main road onto a steep very narrow driveway. I thought this would go for ten, twenty or a hundred metres at the most. Instead it went on and on for several kilometres. We were sliding around over the extremely rough road surface precariously close to the edge.

We passed another eco lodge that charges $500 per night. It didn’t look as eco as our lodge, nor did it have the nearby village to interact with, but it was obviously a lot closer to the gorilla headquarters. Where's the adventure in that?

Finally we reached a small car park at a small flat area. We stopped here as the rest of the driveway followed a very steep slippery road uphill. Any vehicles attempting it in this weather would be putting our lives in danger. We put on our ponchos and started walking up the steep muddy road through the forest. After five minutes the road turned around in a hairpin bend. It continued steeply rising through the forest, but we saw a gazebo ahead of us.

About twenty metres short of the gazebo, there were a group of porters standing in the rain all wearing camouflage raincoats. No doubt they were waiting for us to register and request their services.

We entered the gazebo. The thick cloud, rain, and forest made the inside of the gazebo very dark. We all took a seat before a couple of other groups arrived at the gazebo.

There was a large desk positioned to the left of the main entrance. A uniformed man sat at the desk processing some paperwork. We filled in our details in a book similar to the sign in books used on Mount Kilimanjaro. Travis suddenly realized that he should have told us to bring our passports. I didn’t have mine, so I ended up making up my passport number – I only remembered the first three digits, so made up the rest.

Fortunately the guy at the desk didn’t seem to worry about that. The whole signing in process in the dark gazebo took quite a long time, but eventually we were all signed in. Then another man stood in front of the desk and introduced himself.

“I’m Geoffrey,” he said. He mentioned some of the rules with groups staying together. He went through an old school safety briefing. Anyone with any transmittable diseases like tuberculosis or similar would not be allowed up. Gorillas share 98% of DNA in common with humans. Even chimpanzees are only 96%. Because gorillas are so similar to humans biologically, they are very susceptible to diseases spread by humans. No one declared, so he assumed that everyone present was healthy.

He continued mentioning there are six gorilla families here in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. Five of these are for tourism and the other one for research. There were a total of seven hundred and fifty live gorillas. We were going to be divided into three groups each tracking one gorilla family.

He discussed issues such as if a group doesn’t find gorillas, they will be refunded half the $500 park entrance fee. People who are unfit and don’t want to continue will be provided with two guides to help them out, but they won’t get any refund. He suggested these people join a gym and come back in a year or two. He mentioned anyone who doesn’t want to do the walking and tracking, they can pay around $300 depending on distance, and when gorillas are found, they can utilize the local quick response rescue team to take them up there by helicopter, and then take them down again after the hour of viewing. That idea was very tempting, but what is a gorilla trek without the slog that comes with it? I have travelled half way around the world to experience this.

He mentioned that otherwise we have to stick together as a group. There were many dangerous animals out there in the forest, and we are susceptible to attack. Therefore one of the assistant guides will be carrying a semi-automatic AK47 gun. Although they will do whatever they can to scare any predators away, they will shoot them if they have to in order to protect us.

Then he mentioned someone had a lazy leg. We didn’t know what he was talking about until he pointed to my walking polé. He then showed us some really nice walking poles which he called lazy legs, and offered to sell one to us and to take away. I can’t imagine getting one of these onto the plane back to Australia through. He said if you didn’t want to buy a lazy leg, then we can borrow one at the start of the trek. The borrowed ones obviously won’t be as nice as his ones for sale though.

I liked the term “lazy leg”, so will refer to my walking pole as my lazy leg from now on.

He then asked us to look at our tickets and join the group outside. There were three signs outside, so I went to the Mishaya group. This included the four of us from my tour, a Dutch lady and two young guys from Sydney. Here we met our guides.

The main guide was Wilbur – a name easy for me to remember as my chief guide on the Inca Trail was also named Wilbur. The assistant guide with the shotgun was Charlie. Wilbur was wearing a large grey jacket and carrying a small sickle. He asked us if anyone wants a porter. Only Sandra and I requested porters. Two young men approached, and I introduced myself to my porter. He introduced himself as Dougie and he seemed to be a really nice natured bloke. Like most of the locals, he had a very athletic physique so he will be fine to carry my large camera during the tough part of the trek if needed.

Once the meeting and greeting was done, we walked back down to the vans. Our group jumped back into our van with Jeremiah, our porters and also with Charlie, so it was rather crowded. We set off back along the rough road to our starting point.

We returned to the main part of the village at the end of the road where we had walked to yesterday. From there will walk straight up the hill. The track was initially easy, but quite wet due to all the rain that had fallen so far this morning. The rain had thankfully by now reduced to a light mist which allowed me to pack away my poncho which was dragging a bit on the ground.

Dougie my porter took my backpack and we all started walking up the hill. Wilbur led the way, followed by the tourists and porters. Two assistant guides took up the rear, Charlie had his AK-47 shot gun to protect us should be we attacked by any of the wild animals up there - well that's what they said. The truth was he was here to protect us in case any people came over the border from the Congo to kidnap and kill tourists as they occasionally do here. The situation here was concerning for us to the extent that the Australian Government’s smart traveller website had currently marked this area as a “do not travel” zone as they considered it too dangerous.

There was an instance in recent years where a group of tourists from the UK, New Zealand and USA had been captured, marched through the rainforest for a day, then eight of the group had been brutally mutilated and killed with their skulls crushed in and deep slashes cut to their bodies. Fortunately six other hostages had been released, but only because the captors wanted them to tell the story so no one else would come. The captors were apparently Rwandan rebels based in the Congo.

Our guides and porters were all wearing dark green army camouflage clothing. That must be the uniform up there. They were all also wearing black gumboots. I had never seen so many gumboots since moving away from New Zealand fifteen years ago. Perhaps that was all they could afford. Given it was going to be pretty muddy up there walking through the gluggy clay mountain soil, I would have thought gumboots would have been useless for walking through sticky mud, but as I’d later find out, they didn’t seem to pose any problem whatsoever.

The track steeply ascended to a few houses precariously perched on the spur. To my surprise we were led through the yards of these houses before continuing along the trail which quickly became very narrow but levelled following the contour from the ridge into the next gully.

Upon reaching the gully, we saw a crudely cut track heading straight into the cloud. We followed this track slowing us down a lot. It passed through a couple of cabbage and potato paddocks on a forty degree slope. The soil was very soft and slippery from the overnight rain, which had by now completely stopped. We all struggled up the almost non-existent track. Dougie was enormously helpful in giving me a hand up the bigger steps, and where it was very slippery. He cut small steps into the mud for us to climb.

The track continued getting more difficult as it continued to steepen, and I found myself constantly holding Dougie’s hand. I thought back to what I had said last night, but this was clearly a different situation. He was here to help me attain my final goal for this trip, and if that meant us holding hands to make the going easier, then so be it. A couple of the others were also holding hands with guides and porters, but some seemed to be happy just to slip and slide their way up the hill.

The gully turned and got even steeper. Not only was Dougie pulling me up from in front, but one of the guides was pushing me from behind. It was a crazy situation. Sure I was more than fit enough to get up this hill, but the ground was so slippery underfoot that I just couldn’t do it alone.

Everyone else seemed to be managing, whether being pushed or pulled, or through having some miraculous ability to walk on this slimy mud slope. We were all determined to get up there, and a little mud wasn’t going to stop us. At least the rain had completely stopped falling.

We stopped under a few small trees in a gully in between two muddy cabbage fields on the forty degree slope. After a few minutes rest, we continued up the slope.

We continued for another ten minutes before stopped again whilst Wilbur radioed the tracking team again. They were about 40 minutes away up the hill currently sitting with the gorillas. We pressed on, climbing even further up into the thick fog clouds that concealed the tops of the ridges.

The eerie mist thickly enveloped us as we climbed even further. The steep paddocks where cabbages were growing quickly gave way to scrubland at the edge of the forest. Wilbur indicated we were getting near now. Then we suddenly left the track along a freshly cut route through thick broadleaf ground vegetation standing a couple of metres high. The cut vegetation was still fresh and lain across the ground roughly following the contour of the hill. The trackers must have cut this within the past hour.

We were near.

In the van on our way to the gazebo in the forest, we had made bets on what times we will see the gorillas. Sandra had started the ball rolling with suggesting 11:45. Hendrick nominated 12:00, and Sebastiaan nominated 1:45. I was still a bit stiff from having conquered Kilimanjaro a week ago so I was keen to get it over and done with. I also recalled yesterday’s group who saw our gorilla family had only taken one hour to reach them, so I nominated 11:00.

It was 11:05 when we first saw them – I had won the bet.

We had started zig-zagging down the thick broadleaf scrub following the route the trackers had cut when following the gorillas. Now gorillas being wild animals have no concept of containment, so they move freely through the forest. We were dealing with a moving target - a target that no doubt moves faster than us.

Dougie led me through the thick scrub which was rather difficult underfoot now with the vegetation along the trail mostly having been pushed over, exposing the slippery stems which we scrambled over. He gestured me to follow him up a rather steep embankment which he cleared a bit more. Then he pointed down the hill into the thicket before going into my bag to pull out my camera.

The cloud was very thick, but deep in the mist just ten metres away was a small female climbing one of the small trees to get some leaves to eat. It was quite dark though with the cloud being thick. It quickly disappeared into the foliage before its weight suddenly caused the tree to collapse. Whether that was accidental or done on purpose I don’t know. Once fallen, it was completely hidden in the foliage.

By now I had my camera. This was going to be challenging. Then Dougie led me another two metres around as Wilbur cleared some more vegetation in front of us, revealing a large male silverback. He mentioned this one was part of a larger family group, but about two years ago it had mounted a challenge against the alpha male of the group. It had lost, so it left the family group with a few of the females to start up its own group.

Wilbur told us there were twelve gorillas in this group, and they were all here, although they were all hidden under the foliage as they tend to do on rainy days. I could hear them all eating. Such enormous vegetarian beasts needed enormous quantities of food each day, so like most other herbivores, they spent much of their time eating. Once they have eaten out an area, they move onto another area.

The small trees were swaying as they broke pieces off to eat. Only the silverback was visible, and only the side of his face was visible in the dense vegetation. Despite their elusiveness they were rather destructive.

There wasn’t much to see with the vegetation and thick cloud obscuring them, so the guides hacked away at the vegetation around us to give us a better view. I had thankfully left the polarizer back at the lodge. Even so the extremely high humidity was causing the lens protector UV filter to fog up on the inside. I had no choice but to remove it exposing the main lens. Additionally the camera was having a lot of trouble focusing on the gorillas and would focus on the vegetation in front instead. The vegetation had a more defined structure with the edges of leaves and branches for the camera to capture. The gorillas on the other hand had very soft fur resulting in the camera ignoring it. I therefore had to switch to manual focus mode in the hope that the focus would at least be reasonable. It’s really hard to tell when viewing on such a tiny screen in difficult terrain and weather.

The gorillas remained elusive under the vegetation as they ate it. At one point though they suddenly decided it was time to move to a new area. The silverback had decided he had enough of the area and moved on with the rest of the group obediently following him. Perhaps the vegetation here didn’t taste too good. They moved quickly to the right below us, so the trackers started clearing a route for us to follow them.

The gorillas were incredibly agile moving through the thick vegetation as we struggled through the track cut by the trackers above them.

The silverback found another location nearby and sat with its back to us for a couple of minutes before moving on again. Apparently this area wasn’t very good. Now I realised why the males are called silverbacks. The middle of its back was almost completely bald, with what little hair was left being a silver grey colour. The rest of its hair was a charcoal grey colour.

This time he shuffled along slowly looking for the next good piece of vegetation to eat. It quickly disappeared into the forest again. We could now see one of the females climbing a small tree through the thick forest. It was hard to see in the thick cloud which had once more descended around us. Its black hair was matted together a bit from the morning rain. It then started heading further away through the vegetation, so Dougie continued hacking away at the thick jungle undergrowth to pave a way towards the silverback.

We were only two more metres up the track when a cute baby came into view eating the vegetation. We continued along through the thick undergrowth before we saw the huge silverback again, serenely working its way towards its next location. It found a good spot hidden from view, so we continued along the steep terrain, seeing glimpses of the babies and females in between the huge leaves that we passed. They were there all right, but they were just hard to find.

We eventually reached a spot where the silverback’s face came into full view. It just sat there picking leaves, putting them into his mouth and chewing away. Its huge elongated nostrils were breathing heavily. Occasionally it would look over to us, the strange bald white apes that would come by each day, each coming from far-away places unimaginable and paying $500 each just to see them.

A baby suddenly popped up about four metres in front of the silverback. The cloud had now risen giving us a clear view again. Hopefully I can start getting some good shots now. A female appeared right next to the baby. It was obviously its mother.

The restless silverback was on the move again. This time though it only moved about two metres. Now it was out in the open giving us a clear view of it. Now he was finally photogenic. He picked more leaves and chewed on them slowly. These beasts obviously spend all day eating like this, going from one location to another. They were clearly a close family group. He had a very long flat forehead over his elongated face. His ears were almost identical in shape to ours.

It sat there for a good twenty minutes eating away when it suddenly let off a phenomenally loud ripper of a fart. It sounded like thick canvas being torn. It was far louder and stronger than any fart that any human could emit. Naturally there was a lot of sniggering from the group, but that incident was quickly forgotten as we continued to admire the awesome animal, which was genetically so close to us. None of the other gorillas laughed. I think the laughing at flatulence is just a human thing.

I did get a lot of shots of him from where I was standing, but had to stay on manual focus which isn’t a good thing with my eyesight. The few times when I did try autofocus, the camera would focus on the sharp edges of the leaves either in front of, or behind the gorilla, always putting him sadly out of focus. I would never know whether any of the photos would be any good until returning home in a few days. The screen on the camera wouldn’t be able to pick the detail, nor would my little travel computer. Even if I could, it would be too late to discover that none of the photos had turned out. I crossed my fingers hoping that at least some of the shots would be good.

Mishaya continued eating in its melancholy manner in the same spot, still looking at us on a regular basis.

Finally he left the spot and started lumbering on all fours continuing through the forest with surprising ease given his enormous size. His ghostly figure continued through the thick undergrowth, and we heard more rustling around him as the smaller females and babies joined him in his quest for more food.

Wilbur continued cutting the track further up the hill towards where the group were heading. Mishaya had now found another location facing the other way. Again he was sitting down in the thick foliage munching away. Again the autofocus was almost impossible with all the foliage around, so I kept the camera on manual focus. I hoped it wasn’t bothering him as we had been told at the briefing this morning not to make eye contact with them.

A female with rather wiry hair passed close to us, but remained hidden in the dense foliage apart from the odd patch of fur showing. The jungle here was quite thick, here at the very edge of the Congo. I gave my camera to Dougie to take a couple of shots of me, but he didn’t really understand the concept of getting both me and the gorilla in the shot. I then handed it over to Hendrick who was successful in getting a couple of shots despite the very difficult terrain.

From this angle we could see that one eyebrow was paler than the other. Perhaps it was a result of a battle when he left the larger group two years ago.

One of the babies poked its head up allowing me to get a couple of reasonable shots. It was probably more of a child than a baby though. It was chewing on a long shoot.

Then suddenly the hour was up. Wilbur told us we could have another five minutes though, but it seemed that Mishaya knew the hour was up, and he got up and left his comfortable spot. He headed further around the ridge with the other gorillas. We continued tracking through the thick forest. One of the females walked close beside him whilst the rest of the group stayed hidden beneath the foliage. Once more we got to see his rear end which was disproportionately too small compared to his enormous front.

Within a minute they were all gone, leaving us alone in the remote wilderness forest. We were all still in awe of having spent an entire hour with our closest relatives in the animal kingdom. Wilbur and Dougie continued cutting a bit more bush until we reached an old walking track. We followed the track past where we had watched the gorillas from and continued around the hill. Dougie had a machete no bigger than a large kitchen knife, but he easily cut through a five centimetre thick branch that was in the way.

After another ten minutes we suddenly reached the top of the ridge where it was clear with a vegetable farm going down one side of it. There were a few crude wooden structures perhaps built a few years ago to store the vegetables. We continued following the track for a bit longer before finding a good place to sit and have our lunches which had been packed for us at the hotel.

It was about half past twelve when we started lunch. Thick cloud once more enveloped us. We had been so lucky with the cloud clearing enough to clearly see the gorillas for a short time.

Then I realised my mission was accomplished. I had come to Africa and achieved all four goals. I had been up the world’s tallest building. I had been on safari in Masai Mara, I had celebrated my fortieth birthday at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, and over the past hour I had seen gorillas in the wild.

Having done everything I had set out to do this trip, I was now quite ready to go home.
Then I realised just how far away from home I was. I was fourteen thousand kilometres away on the other side of the world at the edge of the second largest jungle on the planet in a remote corner of Uganda almost at the border of the Republic of Congo.

As of now I was on my way home, which would involve the climb back down the hill to the lodge, then two days ride in the van back to Kampala, then two and a half days of flying over three flights back home. Home was five days away. It was going to be a long journey.

I looked at Sandra, Hendrick and Hans. They too were elated to have experienced the gorillas. For all of us it was a major milestone.

Wilbur stood up in front of us and did a presentation about the family we had just seen, and about the forest. He said we had been lucky to have seen them so soon. They had actually come out onto the farmland two days ago. The local farmers are not allowed to hunt them though otherwise they will face lengthy jail terms. Killing a gorilla earns as much jail time as killing a human. If a gorilla does damage to a farm property, the government uses some of the money that we pay for the trek to compensate the farmer.

Once the presentation was complete, we started slipping and sliding our way down the hill again. It was a quick descent, only taking about half an hour. Dougie was very helpful in assisting me down. He walked this land as if it were dead flat. Thankfully with him giving me a hand down, I didn’t slip at all and made it down just as quickly as everyone else.

We were almost at the middle of the village when we reached a small flat clearing area that perhaps could have a house built on it. There were a couple of long logs. The guides and porters sat on one log, and the rest of us sat on the other facing them. They looked like part of an army with their dark green camouflage clothing, gumboots, sickles and gun. Fortunately we weren’t attacked by anything, so the gun wasn’t needed. They all wore military hats.

Geoffrey from the gazebo in the rain had arrived and joined us. He was in the process of writing some paperwork, perhaps signing us out. He mentioned that our vans will pick us up from here as there was no point in going all the way back to the gazebo in the forest just to sign out, especially with our accommodation being so close.

After ten minutes of resting and of Geoffrey finishing his paperwork, he handed some envelopes over to Wilbur to begin the graduation ceremony. Sebastiaan got the first certificate, followed by Hendrick. Then the others, then I got one, and finally Sandra got hers. They were all sealed up in envelopes so we don’t get them dirty until we get home.

Finally we posed with the guides. I posed next to Wilbur and he generously let me hold his super sharp sickle.

We walked down the steep dirt road to the village about a hundred metres away. There our van was waiting along with about twenty villagers, all of whom we had seen yesterday. The little boy who kept saying ‘hello’ at the top of his voice was definitely there. It seemed they didn’t have anything better to do but to greet visitors to their village.

We jumped in the van and Jeremiah took us for an easy ride down the rough road to the ecolodge where we relaxed for the rest of the day before starting the long journey home towards our respective countries early the next morning.