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Day fifteen (continued)
After the border formalities we walked through the village and up a hill to our campsite. It was around a 2 hour walk. We set the tents up with the Volcanoes featuring prominently in the background. Craig was cooking and we had pasta for dinner. Craig and Corey had managed to pick up Giardia from the water and were generating egg smelling burps, among other gaseous aromas. We had been lucky with the weather as The Congo was primarily rainforest and so had a tendency to rain quite regularly and in large quantities. I prayed that the rain would hold off for another day.
Day sixteen
Gorilla Day. There were three gorilla groups in the vicinity and so we were going to be split into three teams. I went on the smallest group, which was supposed to have one silverback called Quitondo and 7 females. Our guide showed up with an automatic rifle, primarily to protect us from poachers and other unsavoury characters. We wandered around the hills below the volcanoes for an hour before stopping to wait for another guide.We were just a few hundred metres from the jungle which was shrouded in cloud and I now understood the reason for the movie title "Gorillas in the Mist".
The second guide was supposed to find the whereabouts of the gorillas' last campsite and then lead us to this spot so that they could track the gorillas who would move around all day. The guide didn't show so we walked into the jungle anyway. This was my first experience of proper "jungle" and it was so dense that sunlight struggled to make an impression. The guide carried a machete and used it to good effect hacking his way through branches and vines that contrived to block our path. I decided that the jungle was totally inhospitable to man and that I wouldn't last five minutes if I was lost in it on my own.
The other guide found us not long after we entered the jungle and showed us which direction to head. After about 45 minutes hacking and slashing, we found the gorillas. The guide beckoned to us to come forward and to be very quiet. He pulled back a branch and there was a female munching on leaves. The silverback came thrashing through the undergrowth and we had to stay completely still. The silverback was big.
After a watching us warily for a few minutes the male gorilla lost interest and proceeded to go and see one of his females.To our surprise and amusement, he then jumped the female and did the wild thing making some interesting noises in the process. Everyone was clicking away madly on their cameras by this stage. One of the females had a baby that was latched onto its mothers stomach but I managed to get a shot of its face.
We watched the gorillas for about an hour which was all we were allowed. The guide wouldnt let us get too close as Quitondo was supposed to be the most volatile of the three silverbacks and he didn't want to take any chances. We did get in arms length of the female gorillas who walked past our positions a few times. In the end I took about 2 rolls of film, but Ted and Heather who were in my group took 5 rolls.
We found out later that the ones that had gone to see Oscar's group (largest with 18) had walked for about 3 hours before finding them but they had got a lot closer actually sitting down beside the gorillas, with one of the baby gorillas playing with Danny's hand.
After our hour was up (that's all we are allowed) the guide led us back out of the jungle. The guide stopped off at a family of locals for a beer or something. We had to sit outside the hut and wait. He came out again looking quite stoned. We went back to camp and tipped the guide around 5000 Ugandan shillingi .The guide was not impressed, but we were all budget travellers so that was his bad luck. I got a porter to carry my stuff down the hill and we went back to the border to pick up our passports before going through to the Ugandan border.
