In line with some of our other oddball vacations, the most common conversations I’ve been fielding lately in response to “where is your next vacation?”, generally go like this:
- OTHER PERSON:
So, where is your next vacation?
ME:
Rwanda
OTHER PERSON:
Why?
ME: To go
Gorilla Trekking
OTHER PERSON:
I’m sorry, gorilla what?
ME: You
know – hiking in the Rwandan jungle to spend an hour sitting with silverback
mountain gorillas and hopefully having babies climb on me. And ideally not getting pushed or dragged
into the jumble by a dominant male. It
happens!
OTHER:
Shakes head. You are so weird.
So, we are off to Rwanda for safari, gorilla trekking,
golden monkey trekking, chimp trekking, and other exciting adventures.
This is our third time going to Africa and our 5th
African country visited. Every time is
better than the last and we can’t wait to see what adventures await!
Days 9-10: Gorilla
Trekking in Volcanos National Park
Background – Volcanoes National Park is Rwanda’s gorilla
area. It contains the Five Rwandan
Volcanos, of which one actually borders 3 countries (Uganda, Congo and
Rwanda). Only one of the volcanoes is
still considered active. In the park,
there are 23 monitored gorilla families and 4 additional families that are not
monitored because they cross borders with the other countries.
Now – for the good stuff - today is the reason we are in
Rwanda – trekking in the jungle to find a family of mountain gorillas. OMG – where to begin. I guess I woke up at 4:45 am, but that is
mostly because I barely slept from excitement.
We had a quick breakfast and met Salim (our driver) at 6:45 to start the day. The adventure started with our hotel dressing
us in leg gaters to protect our legs and ankles from prickleys, rain, biting
ants and bugs. We made a quick stop at a
park designed specifically for an annual baby gorilla naming ceremony (40
babies this year!) and then a short drive to the gorilla start point.
We had a few minutes to wander around and then were called
into our trekking groups for an overview of the experience. Before arriving, we had the opportunity to state
our preference for an easy, moderate or difficult hike and we were sorted into
groups of 8 based on those preferences. We chose moderate.
How do they know where the gorillas are??? Every evening, the dominant silverback
designates a place where the family will nest for the night – it changes every
night. The park has teams of trackers
that follow each gorilla family to their nesting spot every night, and then the
following morning, they return to the nesting spot and track where the gorillas
moved to. Generally, the gorillas stay
within a mile or so of the nest. Once
the family is spotted, HQ knows where they are and how far they are to assign
trekking groups to a particular family.
Back to our experience – we were told that our gorilla
family would be Agashya. The name means
“special”. And our gorilla family
apparently has its own insta account (@agashya_family). Without going into too much detail on gorilla
family dynamics, what our guide shared with us is that this gorilla family was
one of Dian Fossey’s original families – named “Group 13”. The dominant silverback died and a strong
female took over, first time ever and very unusual. Typically, a brother or son will take over, but
there were none of appropriate age.
Enter a solitary male gorilla (forgot his original name), that woo’d the
lady gorillas into letting him lead the family without any fighting. That was “special”. But the better part was that the new
silverback did not kill all the existing babies, which is what happens when a
new male takes over. And that was also special. Thus, the new family name. Agashya is currently the oldest gorilla at 50
years old – average lifespan for males is 35 and females is 45. He is still around, but has retired and let a
younger gorilla lead. Editorial note: we did receive multiple sometimes conflicting stories live and on-line about our gorilla family, but I like the one above the best.
After our briefing, we drove about 20 minutes to our hiking
start point. They try to get you as
close as possible to the mountain and have more than 50 potential drop points. Our drop location was formerly a high
poaching area, but when saving the gorillas outweighed poaching, the village
was renamed Gorilla Guardians Village.
We were given walking sticks and we all hired porters to carry our packs
(seems weird, but it helps the villages and in hindsight, they were super
helpful).
We spent about 20-30 minutes walking through farmland with
kids waving along the way. Crops,
cattle, pigs, potatoes, and white flowers that are the basis of insect
repellent. Then we moved into a section
that was not yet the park, but it was a proposed park expansion, so there was a
lot of bamboo planted to encourage future habituation by gorillas. Gorillas love the bamboo. Things were looking good for a while, then we
hit a very distinct line of trees that signified we were entering the
park. I’ll say that the scenery was gorgeous,
and we were lucky to have sun and warm temperatures!
We entered the park, and while still on what appeared to be
a path, the foliage was much thicker, and we were told there were mountain
buffalo and mountain elephants that could be roaming around. Mountain freaking elephants? I seriously thought they were kidding until I
saw huge elephant poops and HUGE footprints on this teeny tiny path. As the foliage got thicker and thicker, we
were warned not to touch stinging nettles, aka “oh shit” plants because when
they touch you, first thing you say is, OH SHIT because they really hurt.
My porter, Mike, is not only carrying my pack, but also
making sure I don’t wipe out on the muddy path, trip on the rocks, or fall into
stinging nettle, which was everywhere.
We walk for maybe an hour, and we hear that the trackers have located
our family, and they are trying to get us to them. Then, off in the very far distance, we see
our first gorilla pop out of the brush!
It was so exciting, and we were still at least 30 minutes away.
Once the trackers locate the family, there is no more path,
no matter how small our path had been, it was still a path. To get to the gorillas, the trackers start
bushwacking with machetes to clear a path. We are now walking through dense foliage that
is being chopped down as we make our very slow journey through the brush. And to add excitement, this is not flat
ground, we are going uphill, sometimes at an angle akin to walking up steps,
only we are walking up a slippery mountain with hacked bamboo as our floor. When we are close enough, the porters stopped and we left our packs and walking sticks, we were handed masks, and off we go for the final
leg. At this point, we can hear them
(and smell them). We can hear snorting
and chomping and whooping and chest pounding. There was a surprising amount of chest pounding that sounds very thumpy - a hollow thumping. When we are super close, we put on masks to avoid any cross
contamination.
And boom – there they are!
First, we see the family namesake Agashya tucked into the trees. As we keep going, more gorillas come into
view. There are babies, there are
young’uns, there are teens, there are multiple adult males and females, and a
second silverback that is now the leader just chilling in a slight opening in
the brush. We parked there for about 45
amazing minutes watching them eat, challenge each other, annoy each other and
play with each other. Some of them were
huge. They love pounding their chest. They are
fast. At one point (we were warned this
could happen), one came running at me and stopped right in front of me
and then ran away. I followed
instructions and crouched and looked down, heart racing. It was very quick! He never even touched me.
Most of the time we were within 5-6 feet. Sometimes they might come a little closer. At one point, one of the ladies was looking
to get it on with the silverback. She
was using all her feminine wiles to lure him in. He finally left. She pursued him. He ignored her. She backed off. Then the guide told us to turn on video
because the silverback was going to make a run at her! This 450 lb silverback gorilla starts
thumping his chest and comes charging out of the brush at the lady gorilla,
makes a sharp turn and nearly took out our entire group running in front of
us. Best video of the day!
After that excitement, the silverback was on the move and
the rest of the family followed. We
waited a few minutes and bushwacked our way through the forest to spend our
last 15 minutes with them. They were
less easy to spot, but we still got to see the babies playing in the trees and
bushes and a final goodbye to the silverback.
At exactly the one-hour mark, we left.
No exceptions. The gorillas are
used to humans, but to keep stress to an absolute minimum, visitors can stay
for a maximum of one hour, which is about what the gorillas don’t mind. More than that and they just leave.
The trek down was much faster as we had a more direct
route. We picked up our porters, packs
and sticks and headed out. At this
point, the trackers left us to go back to the family and continue to monitor
them until they nested for the night.
Then they can go home and pick up the location of the family again the
next day. The trackers do this every day
for every family – not only to keep track of where they are, but they also
monitor the health and well-being of the animals.
We thought that our day’s adventure was over. It wasn’t.
We got to a clearing because there was a buffalo not too far out, but
also not very close. I really thought
the mountain buffalo and mountain elephant were stories, but there was the
buffalo! While we did see a lot of
buffalo and elephant poop, the guides said that it is rare to see buffalo and
exceedingly rare to see elephants.
As we continued walking through dense brush, out of freaking
nowhere, we hear a bunch of loud noise and crunching right near us and all the
guides “got animated”. I had no clue
what was going on, but apparently there were buffalo RUNNING near us. You couldn’t see anything, but the noise was
so loud. At this point, I’m expecting to get trampled by a mountain
buffalo. My porter, Mike, is asking me
if I’m okay and I said I’m totally fine, I told him that I hoped that noise was
an elephant! I hear one of the trackers
cock his rifle, which they do to scare off the animals more likely to kill us. Ironically, that was not the gorillas.
We keep going, and not five minutes later, more loud
cracking and snorting – these buffalo were close. Still couldn’t see anything, but now Mike
herds me in one direction and gets between me and where we think the buffalo is. Mike is about 170 pounds wet. No way he is going to protect me from a
charging buffalo. But we do what we can. Near death avoided, we carry on. We make it out of the dense brush of the park
and back to the farmland and of course it starts pouring rain. But we are so hopped up on adrenaline that it
is fine. We walk the remaining 30
minutes back to our waiting rides and head back to the lodge, but not before
sampling some weird and shockingly colorful red, pink and purple beans that grow in the fields.
Absolutely amazing experience and I can’t believe we get to
do it a second time tomorrow! We got
back to our lodge and were treated with a foot massage while our boots were
cleaned, then lunch, showers, and a relaxing evening doing nothing but waiting
for our next trek.
Gorilla Trek – Day 2
I’ll just skip to the good part – right to the Gorillas! Today we learned that we will be trekking
with two of the couples from yesterday’s group – a couple from New Zealand and
a couple from Mexico, plus we added one new couple, and our guide is the same
from yesterday. The gorilla family we
will be visiting is called Umubano, which means “living together” or
“harmony”. And the reason for this name is because
this family is made up of SIX silverbacks and 14 total gorillas, but no
babies. It is unusual to have that many
silverbacks, but they are sons and brothers and have figured it out. Male gorillas fully mature at about 12 years
old, which is when they become silverbacks.
Our hike today was much easier than yesterday. We had a nice walk through the farmland, and
the place where we entered the park remained relatively flat for most of our
trek. We seemed to be on a
buffalo/elephant path because there were piles of poop everywhere. The other major difference in today’s trek
was the mud. There was so much mud – we
were hopping from rock to rock trying to avoid the thick mud. My porter today, Pacific, was helping me
navigate. After a while, it seemed
fruitless to try to go it on my own since he was always there grabbing my hand
and telling me where to step. Funnily
enough, Damon got the same treatment.
Had to put aside the male ego for a minute! I’m sure they just want to ensure no sprained
ankles or falls.
After about an hour of relatively easy trekking, we found
our trackers, left our bags and porters, donned our masks, and went in search
of the gorillas. The first few we
encountered were very lazy. They were
tucked away in the bushes sitting alone or sleeping and generally the group was very spread out and hidden in the brush. We hung out in the area for about 20 minutes
and I was starting to think that while cool, they just weren’t doing anything
and I was happy that we had yesterday’s experience. There were supposed to be a lot more gorillas
and the trackers were trying to find them so we could intercept the ones on the
move. We knew they were out there
because you could hear them and the trees would be shaking as the gorillas
pulled them down to eat.
Eventually we started walking again and that is when things
got fun. There were silverbacks
everywhere. They said only six, but the gorillas kept moving and there were times we were just surrounded by them. At one point, our group sort of split into
two and Damon was lower down having his own experience with a few silverbacks
while I was up higher. There were six or
seven gorillas all together and so our guide grabbed my hand and started
dragging me up the mountain with a few others behind me – through a brutal area
of stinging nettles that had not been whacked down by machete. We just raw-dogged it through the massive stinging plants while I’m like, ow, ow, ow. But
we pushed on. Unfortunately, just as we
were getting to the gorillas, they all got up and left in a single file line
and as I was perched in a forest of stinging nettles on a 45 degree slope,
couldn’t get the camera out fast enough.
We followed behind the group and eventually found the
dominant male, Charles, just chilling.
As we stood on the path, the gorillas just kept coming. They were very mobile and would walk toward
us and as we tried to get out of the way, they would just brush right past us
without a care in the world. To be that
close to a silverback gorilla is an awesome thing, other than the smell, which
is rather potent. They generally seem
very calm and gentle. They are aware we
are there but are totally socialized to humans.
Eventually, our split group merged back together, and I got
to meet the gorilla Damon had been watching – a silverback that lost a leg as
an infant in 2011 either from a conflict or a snare trap, and the Gorilla Doctors
opted to amputate. Luckily, he adapted
well and15 years later and he is doing just fine!
It is hard to pinpoint a specific cool experience today and hard to put into words what it was like to have wild mountain gorillas everywhere around us, and the limited photos and videos just don't do it justice. These are awesome creatures and today I tried to take fewer videos and pictures and just exist in the moment. They are aware of our presence, but mostly just ignore us and do their thing, and it is mesmerizing to watch.
Our hour ended much too quickly and we soon had to head back. We hiked out the same way we hiked in, so
relatively easy, muddy, hike with no rogue buffalo or other unanticipated
excitement. We had been told that no two
visits are the same, but all are amazing, and our experience proved that
out. Our first visit was to a family
with all ages, very active, and fun playful babies. Our second visit was to a mature family
filled with silverbacks that both slept, lounged, and were on the move. Equally amazing.
If you can do this trip, HIGHLY RECOMMEND!
We did visit the Ellen Degeneres Dian Fosse Gorilla museum - worth it to learn more about how Dian Fosse almost singlehandedly responsible for saving the once near extent but now thriving gorillas.
