BWINDI IMPENETRABLE FOREST ~ REST DAY
Day 13: Thursday 23 December
An early wake up and an early breakfast was necessary as I had to get to the park office to secure a permit. I can’t believe that the moment I had been waiting for, for so long, had finally arrived. I was very fortunate to get this permit but I am embarrassed to tell you that it cost me $500!!!!! According to my knowledge it was meant to be $300 but obviously all the info I was reading was outdated – so much for my research.
There are 2 groups of gorillas at Ruhija, the
Bitukuru and the
Oruzogo and only 8 tourists are allowed to track each group. One group of tourists arrived late so they allowed me to buy a permit, thinking they were not arriving, and I was initially going to be on my own tracking the Bitukuru group. They eventually did arrive, so now we had a party of 9.....I was very fortunate that they allowed me to continue.
This was the most amazing moment of my adventure through Africa. I didn’t care about my sore ankle.....I just had to do this. I had a handful of pain killers and anti-inflammatories and I was ready to go.
Our guides name was Obed and he prepped us on the gorillas and their conservation as well as other interesting information.
The Bwindi forest is a 300 km square island of dense vegetation and accommodates 340 of the 700 mountain gorillas that are left in the world. The rest live in the Virunga and Volcanoes Forests. A troop is made up of 2 – 40 members and their home-range is about 10 – 30 km square which does overlap with other groups. They move up to a kilometre a day, depending on food availability. The Bitukuru group, that we were tracking, was made up of 13 members - 4 silverbacks (adult males), 3 black backs ( juvenile males), 4 females and 2 babies.
With a strong walking stick in hand I was finally on my way to seeing these amazing creatures – thanks to Dian Fossey. We squashed into a taxi that had brought the rest of the group from Lake Bunyonyi and drove a couple of kilometres down the road where we started the hike. We followed a pathway down a steep hill through dense bush. There were two armed guides up front and one at the back. About an hour later we stopped for a rest and for the guide to get his bearing on where the group was. The going was good and I immediately thought ‘this is cool, it’s going to be easy.’ Hahahaha.... what a joke!!!
After our rest we were taken off the main pathway and the two guides were using their machetes to hack a pathway for us. We crashed through so much dense bush with thorny stems grabbing at our sleeves and hands, tripping over roots, slipping into holes, vines hooking around our ankles and ants trying to find any exposed flesh to pinch.
This all took place on the 45 degree slopes that we had to work our way up and down, up and down for about another 2 hours. I was at the back of the queue and managed to keep up despite a swollen and painful ankle. I was determined to see these guys. There was much sweating, puffing and panting from everyone.
I could smell them before I could see them!
Above us, sitting on the slopes was a magnificent silverback. He just ignored us and continued feeding and stripping leaves from the stems. He was surrounded by flies but appeared unperturbed. We sat there in awe for quite a while........ just watching!! Occasionally he glanced our way to watch us clicking away furious with our cameras. What was amusing about this chap was his finger. He had an old injured middle finger and it appeared that he was giving us a rude message......perhaps inadvertently expressing his true feelings.
You can see his beautiful silverback.
