Tracking Mountain Gorillas in Bwindi

Calling the small town of Buhoma, Uganda “remote” is an understatement. After a 12 hour bus ride, 4 or 5 of which were on extremely rough dirt roads through the Ugandan mountains, we arrived in Buhoma and hitched a ride in a pickup with a local and an American volunteer to our camp area in Bwindi.

The bus ride was overnight so we didn’t get much sleep (surprise, surprise). The next night, Wednesday, would be our first night not spent in a plane, airport, or bus since we left home, so, as weird as
it may sound, we were excited to sleep in our tent. Then we could recover from the long, violent bus ride so we can be fresh for tracking the next day. A Peace Corps volunteer from Ohio and a couple from the UK gave us some good advice for tracking over dinner.

During our travelling, we weren’t eating much so we had a huge breakfast (eggs, fresh pineapple which was as good as in Costa Rica, toast, juice, and bananas) that next morning. We registered with the Ugandan Wildlife Agency and walked through the sloppy weather to the briefing area. Our guide, Damien, along with two well-armed security escorts, led us up the 2300 ft climb on muddy slopes where we found the recent tracks of the Rushegura group of gorillas. This took us off the trail and into the thick of the jungle where machetes are a must for the guides to clear a path. Other guides ahead of us had located the gorillas and spoke with our guides via radio until we found them.

Once reaching the near vicinity of the gorillas, we couldn’t eat, drink, speak loudly, carry walking sticks, or get too close to them. This is for their protection from disease and our protection from them charging us. If they did charge, we were told not to run or look them in the eye, but stay put. Luckily, we wouldn’t find out how well this works.

We were fortunate enough to see between 10 to 15 of the 17 gorillas in the Rushegura group, including the silverback and a tiny baby (hilarious). They are startlingly desensitized to humans and it often seemed like were posing for the cameras. A young gorilla walked passed Erin and me only about 5 ft away, which shows how comfortable they can be around humans, and I had to scramble to get some video of this and still enjoy the moment. At least the government limits their exposure to humans to 8 visitors per day for no more than 1 hour, which was plenty.

 

After our 1 hour was up, we headed back towards our camp and had a short lunch in a clearing while trying to avoid the swarms of ants we saw on the way up the mountain. We managed the slippery slope down without any major injuries (only some to our pride) and were given certificates of completion of the tracking with hopes that we would tell others of our good experience. I was nervous about our safety beforehand, being that the huge silverback could probably rip me in half without breaking a sweat, but the guides took good care of us and knew exactly how to interact with the gorillas and still keep everyone safe. Overall, it was remarkable to see an animal so similar to us (98% by DNA) but living such different lives.

(Written on November 2nd)