Gorillas!

 September 9, 2024

Gorillas!

 

We spent three days and nights at the Akagera National Park, going on wonderful game drives and boat rides, seeing lion, waterbuck, loads of zebra and giraffe, wart hogs, eland, elephants, rhinos, and baboons.  We saw a profusion of birds, especially on an island in the large lake associated with the park.  Here’s a vervet monkey—something I haven’t posted before: 

Yesterday was a travel day as we drove first down from Akagera (5000 feet elevation) to Kigali and then to the northwest corner of Rwanda, near the borders of the DRC (Congo) and Uganda, and up to 8000 feet to the Volcanoes National Park and our lodge, the Gorilla Mountain Lodge.  I woke at 5:00 AM for a 5:30 breakfast and a 6:00 departure for the gorilla trek.

 This park has twenty gorilla families, each headed by a silverback, the very large dominant male.  Each silverback has a number of females, and the family is made up of them, the babies, juveniles and adolescents.  At around 12 years old, the males begin to develop the characteristic silver color to their backs, and then it’s time for them to leave and form their own families.  Twelve of the twenty families are available for visits; the other eight are reserved for research activities.  Each day during the tourist season (now) the twelve families are visited by a maximum of eight people to each family, with a guide.

 Last night we had a gorilla orientation for almost an hour.  We were taught about their organization, their society, and, most importantly, how to behave around them.  We were told we’d be 10 meters from them, about 30 feet, and that if one approached us, we should back away.  In case of an angry silverback, we should not try to outrun him—we can’t—but rather we should squat, assume a submissive posture, not stare him in the eyes, and that would make him not attack.  This is not an easy instruction!

We met at the orientation place and our 11 people were split into two groups.  My group of six had another couple join us who are traveling on their own.  We then drove to the departure point where we met our guide, and we each were assigned a porter to carry our backpack and help us at difficult places.  We also were given long walking sticks.

We set out from the meeting area, and began climbing through farmland, initially level, with beautiful views of dormant volcanos in the distance. 

We began to climb up and up and up.  This is my porter, Innocent, who has my backpack and helped me on the difficult parts of the climb: 

After about an hour, with a 1000-foot elevation from 8000 feet to 9000 feet, we came to a stone wall which marks the border between the public land and the park.  The wall is to keep the cape buffalo from marauding into farmland and destroying crops. 

 We climbed over the wall, and immediately were in dense forest, which our guide and two rangers who traveled with us, parted with machetes, as we followed paths made by the four-legged animals: 

After another 15-20 minutes, we met up with the trackers.  There are trackers following each family 24-7, and the ones with our family had radioed back to our guide with the location of the family of gorillas we were to visit.  There are no monitors or GPS type devices attached to any of the gorillas—they don’t tolerate it.  We left our porters, our backpacks, our walking sticks, and everything except our cameras at the clearing where we met the trackers, and just beyond was the gorilla family.  Our first encounter was with the silverback and a child: 

But they weren’t 30 feet from us, they weren’t ten feet from us:

The silverback and a child were watching a young gorilla who had climbed high in a tree: 

But the greatest fun was watching them in action.  I’ll post a few videos so you can see what it was like.  I have loads.   Look at the grooming in the last video.  Amazing!

We were allowed one hour with the family, and it passed amazingly quickly.  The hike down was somewhat easier, and I returned to our lodge absolutely thrilled with the experience.