Men of the Mountains: Gorilla Tracking in Uganda

(My trip to Uganda will be spun out over the next 2-3 posts in order to save time, and provide me with convienient writing lengths. Photos will also go up for this, and back a post, tomorrow, I imagine.)

So when you last left me – or I last left you, as the case may be – I had just rediscovered the potentially negative effects of exposing your body directly to the sun for a period of time best measured in decades. The immediate fall-out, of course, is that my range of motion became limited to whatever I was able to do without bending any joints in my legs, arms or neck. This allowed me to sleep standing up and to stand outside of the stream of the shower, whimpering at the thought of stepping into either cold or hot water. The longer term fallout – and that is the appropriate word, in this case – is that my body looks like it was used for director nuclear testing. My peeled, flaked and hung in a manner that made children run screaming from the room and strong men stare in unabashed horror. And that was before I rolled up my sleeves to show them my shoulders.

This kind of total immobility isn’t a problem if, say, you’re embarking on an Indiana Jones marathon or serving as a judge at the ICTR (*zing* … I jest, I jest), but it does hamper your efforts a little if you’re about to get up before the sun and take an overcrowded and hot bus to the very southwestern corner of the country to hike through a forest noted for its thickness of foliage in search of a creature capable of ripping off your arms and beating you to death with them. This, naturally, is what I was about to do.

Gorilla tracking in Africa is the kind of thing that you only get to do if certain conditions are right. First of all, you need to be able to find a permit. This is, in and of itself, a challenging task. They are often booked up months in advance by very large tour companies and then sold off to their intrepid adventurers… who are likely to be helicoptor’d in while sipping on Cristal and munching boiled snails or something. If you’re a student who decided to go to Uganda some time in early December, who then left in mid-December, your odds of getting a permit are about the same as Mats Sundin re-signing with the Leafs Fidel Castro challenging Robert Stanfield to a ‘winner-takes-all’ boxing match (Tagline: Let’s get ready to Sttttuummmbbble!) In spite of that, Ronnie – the brave, charismatic and dashing lad who runs the White House (and is a new reader to the blog) – managed to find us five permits, on the same day for the Nkuringo entrance to Bwindi.

We left Kampala for Kabale early on the morning of the 22nd with Gateway Bus, who manifested the Christmas spirit by charging us double their normal price. The ride itself featured a number of gorgeous vistas, but the most stunning were yet to come. At Kabale, a fairly run-of-the-mill Ugandan town, we hired a very large van to convey the five of us (Ronnie, Rivers, Becky, MaryLou and Cliff, for those keeping score at home) to Kisoro, which was to be our take-off point the following morning. The drive to Kisoro, though, was incredible. After twisting and turning through terraced red hills, layered with crops at regular intervals, we came hurting around the corner of the road to see in front of us three rising peaks, looking for all the world like a series of French party-hat accents. (Demonstration: ^^^) The first one was much bigger than the other two. It, according to our driver, is part of the Virunga volcano chain where three countries – Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda – have their borders meet at the peak. The view was complemented by shafts of sunlight pinching through the clouds to bathe sections of the hills in a particularly active light.

There was a bit of an exciting moment in one small village nestled in the hills when one of the back windows of the van came loose, and the driver pulled over to repair it. The young lads of the town – many of whom had already been enjoying the diverting pleasures of alcohol – began to size up us, and more directly, our luggage. A few made general motions towards the direction of the trunk, but Cliff – who grew up in Uganda before moving to Tanzania to be a professional breakdancer – threatened to “kill them” if they came any closer. Since Cliff’s arms look like they swallowed rocks, this advice was taken to heart, and the troublemakers ambled off. Meanwhile, the four whites happily looked around at all the friendly people and wondered why Cliff was muttering and what the single finger he raised towards them as we drove off meant.

Further adding to the sense of intrigue was the somewhat sobering sight of row upon row upon row of white tents, emblazoned with the letters UN in a field close to Kisoro. This was the home of about 2000 refugees from the Congo, under the care of the United Nations, while fighting and poverty tore their country apart. And here we were… off to spend $500 US to look at some big monkeys.

Thankfully, guilt passes quickly when you realize that a) you’re already in Africa, working for people who’ve suffered and b) you remember that you’re off to see REALLY big monkeys. (My psychologist tells me that being flip is my way of dealing with complex emotions. He also reminds me that he’s non-existant, and that somehow I owe him $300.) We arrived in Kisoro just as it was getting dark, and checked into the Golden Monkeys hostel. It’s quite possible that it’s only because I’d been spending much of the previous few days either on a bus or actively trying not to be drowned in white water, but I was thrilled to find a nice, clean room with a warm shower and prepared meals. Golden Monkeys was run by a very nice lady, who got us a driver to take us into Bwindi the next day, and who had the kitchen rustle us up dinner of our choice.

Way too early the next morning, we roused ourselves and stumbled bleary-eyed into the waiting taxi. Up and into the hills we went again, passing through groves of thick trees and bamboo forest that seemed like promising wildlife hideouts. When we arrived, sun glaring down, at the Park Headquarters at Nkuringo, we were met by Caleb, who was to be our guide for the day. He ensured we had enough water, saying something jocular like “If you don’t have at least two liters, we leave you on the side for the buzzards to pick at!!” and off we went around 8:45am. It was a reasonably long hike just to get to the edge of Bwindi – about 1.5 hours, mostly downhill. This, of course, weighed heavily on my mind since I knew full-well it would be a much LONGER hike back up… but that was for later. We eventually hit a point atop one crest, where Caleb made radio contact with the trackers who’d been sent out earlier, and pointed us straight downcliff to the forest’s edge.

Through a combination of stumbling, falling, tripping, finding myself accidentally upright before falling again and occasionally skipping, I came bouncing to a halt at the bottom of the hill, followed closely by the rest of the group. We picked our way into the forest for about 20 meters, before Caleb shushed us. The trackers materialized from the bush and invited us to put down our packs, and drink our fill of water, since we were going to go in to see the gorillas now. We listened to the safety advice carefully… not least because it consisted entirely of “If one charges you, duck down and avert your gaze.” It’s hard to get bored during a sentence like that, especially considering its brevity. “What,” I queried somewhat tremulously, “should we do if they don’t stop charging?” Caleb laughed and said that he would be up a tree, and consider shouting down some ideas at that point.

We began our trek through the thick tangle, with the guides hacking away with machetes. About 10 seconds after we started, I realized that we were already AT the gorillas. A male, jet-black, was lying on his back intensely interested in the nutritional content of a stick he was gnawing on. He was maybe 5 meters away.

What followed was an incredible hour of chasing – literally, albeit slowly – a group of about 12-16 gorillas through the underbrush. We gasped as the alpha male, a MASSIVE silverback named Safari, ambled towards our group. We cooed and giggled as a tiny baby bounced its head off of the ground. I panicked in blind terror as I realized that I was being tailed by one, and I had ended up as the last one in the group. When the animal DID begin to charge me (and when I say charge, that’s what my adreniline will tell you happened… even if my sober memory gently reminds me that “amble” may have been a better word), I remembered the advice, and went to duck and back away and tripped over a root. catching my foot in it. “Great,” I thought. “Here I am, remembering the damned advice and unable to follow it because my hiking boots have chosen THIS moment to consumate their crush on a hanging vine.” Thankfully, the gorilla stopped in its approach and simply looked at me, likely wondering something along the lines of “How on earth are they in charge of protecting us?”

That gorilla – Posho, I discovered his name was later – was about the coolest animal Ive ever met. He followed us a bit longer, before taking a shortcut and plopping himself down in a tree about 1-2 meters from the group. He was in no rush, and the last 15 minutes of our allotted hour were spent in contemplation of each other. By the time we left, I felt that the next time I was in Bwindi, I could look Posho up and he’d be happy to see me and remind me how if it wasn’t for him being a nice guy, I’d be in the hospital with a case of “being trampled upon by a gorilla”.

We hiked back up the ridge, and a few hours and a few million uphill gasping steps later, we were in the car on our way back to Kisoro.