Gorillas and stuff

We arrived in the nice town of Kisoro in the very South-Western corner of Uganda, about 60km from the Bwindi forest where our troop of gorillas live. The journey was mostly fine, on good tarmac roads, but the final 80km was on dirt road and extremely bumpy. This was more than made up for by the stunning scenery though. The Lonely Planet describes this section of road as the mostly scenically beautiful in all of Uganda, and lists it as one of the country's highlights. It's all gorgeous rolling volcanic hills, completely carpeted in lush green vegetation and terraced fields, really spectacular.

We checked-in to a lovely guesthouse and then had the entire next day to simply organise transport to the park headquarters. On this occasion I didn't want to risk getting a cowboy taxi driver, so I didn't bother to haggle much with the guy recommended by the UWA office in Kisoro (he did rip us off of course, but he was a nice guy and had a decent car, which was important given the state of the roads).

We arrived safe and sound at the park headquarters, after winding our way through the breaking dawn with an eerie mist shrouding the entire landscape (which is where 'Gorillas in the Mist' comes from I suppose). We were the first ones there, shortly followed by 6 other Dutch trekkers. After a brief briefing we headed off in search of the gorillas through the dense forest.

An hour and a half later we reached them and spent the next hour or so just walking around watching the group feed, play and laze about the place. Got lots of photos and one good video sequence, since you can get really close to the them, although of course you can't feed them or get too close. They basically just look at you in a bored sort of way and then move on into the undergrowth and then head off through the forest.

We've met a few people now who've seen various gorilla groups, and all say how amazing it is, with one guy saying it was the most amazing experience of his life! I have to say I think I was a bit under-whelmed by it all really. Probably all the hype plays a big part, I mean they really are quite awesome creatures alright, but once they get used to humans they are really peaceful and don't do much (i.e. we didn't get charged by a huge aggressive silverback or anything, so we were both a tad disappointed - it can happen apparently, though rarely of course). I guess I wanted to start playing directly with them or something (which you can do with the giraffes in Kenya for instance), and so without that direct personal contact it seemed a bit too remote, almost as if they were lounging around behind the plexi-glass of Dublin zoo. Maybe it had something to do with the group of us (8 Europeans and about 3 rangers) all milling about and cameras snapping all over the place (no flashes though of course).

Anyway, it was certainly still a great experience to see them acting so naturally in their native environment, I suppose I really just wanted the whole Dian Fossey experience of really getting to spend a lot of time with them. Maybe it was my natural repulsion at the whole 'tour-group' aspect of the experience, i.e. all of us being shepherded together and only having our alloted hour - but of course I understand it has to be managed that way to keep the gorillas 'wild', so I'm just being picky.

One interesting (to me anyway - although Sarah agreed with me on this one) aspect of the hike into and out of the park though was an nice example of 'The Machine' in action. Two of the Dutch trekkers had arranged porters to carry their small bags - obviously they feared a bit of a hike would be too much for them if they had to carry 2kg of extra weight (they were both in their early thirties I'd say). They also used the porters to help them down the 'steep' bits of the hike - literally holding the holds of the porters as they went. It was all a bit embarrassing really, as both these two fell to the back of the group (not that we were in any hurry or anything). Interestingly though, even though they didn't have to carry anything, and they were the most cautious of the entire group, and they had the helping hands of a porter each, only one person actually fell during the whole day, and you'll never guess who is was - yep, the overly cautious Dutch girl with the porter.

I would have laughed if it wasn't so sad, but you could see it coming right from the very beginning. She was the one worrying about the hike, saying she hoped it wouldn't be too long, and moaning about how 'steep' the descents were going to be (they weren't!), and how slippery it would be (it wasn't). She just oozed negativity and worry, and of course she was in bits physically when we got back, even though I'm sure none of the rest of the group were significantly stronger or fitter than her (she wasn't old, or overweight, or disabled in any way) - all her struggles, and pain, and difficulties (and her subsequent fall, which was really minor) were all purely due to her attitude and her poor self-image.

But another thing I heard from a number of people who did the trek was that the hike was 'worth it' - as if the hike part was some terrible ordeal that had to be suffered in order to get to see the gorillas. But for me the hiking was one of the best bits - the forest was fantastic, and I could have kept hiking all day (not because I was strong or anything, but because I had a positive mental attitude to the experience). But I suppose it's far more common than I realised for the epsilon semi-morons to regard any form of physical exercise as an 'ordeal', to be avoided at all costs by getting in their cars...

So apart from all that, the gorillas were cool! We just spent the next couple of days lazing about in Kisoro, getting bicycles one day to try to get to the headquarters of another national park, but getting a bit lost and ending up near the border of Congo I think!

P.S. I tried uploading a good video clip of the gorillas but the upload failed halfway through due to the connection being lost temporarily, ah well.