John was awake well before the 5.25 alarm and making tea - I think he was excited about his days gorilla trekking.
We were collected by Charles at 6.30 and headed to the Park HQ where the gorilla guides were being briefed - we were checked in then the drivers had a briefing - this is where the trekking groups are allocated.
We got Pablo - the biggest group 30+ individuals with a big ageing silverback Cantsbee - who was originally studied by Diane Fossey when he was a youngster - and a silverback in waiting Gicurasi ( today's photo) It was also the furthest to
travel - 1 hour and the highest and longest climb.
We hired two official porters for the day - money well spent - they carried our day packs helped us through steep slippery patches and were a great support especially to John whose porter by coincidence was also named John.
My porter was Ignacio - he was also the man with the machete - so once we had climbed through the cultivated terraces we entered the park boundary and continued through a large swathe of bamboo forest then finally through wet vegetation where the machete was required to cut paths where none were before. The good thing at about half way we knew, because Roger our guide told us, that the trackers were with the gorillas. That said it took us 3 hours in total to get to them with the last hour through virgin, wet vegetation on a steep hillside the most difficult. This however is why mountain gorillas live here - they like the vegetation and they are relatively safe except for the most tenacious poacher.
We spent a fantastic hour with them, the sun shone,they were chilled but moving and eating but not too fast as they were in a big dip with lots of tasty vegetation so we got to see them clearly as they were eating ( mind you every time you wanted to take a picture of them a piece of vegetation appeared in the viewfinder covering something) - silverbacks, blackbacks , mums and youngsters all passed by us often very close indeed - in fact sometimes they waited patiently for us to move first!
With kids being kids they were playing and eating. After our magical hour we had to head back to the car park - no zip wire so we had to go down what we had just come up. We left just after 2pm and were back in the car park by 4.30pm tired, happy and sweaty. I had to buy 2 t-shirts to mark our success saying we tracked the Pablo group!
On the way back - Roger told me they had thought we might not make it as we were the oldest in the group, particularly John - so he was amazed when we did - I said you have to remember age is only a number!! Youngsters half Johns age were puffing as much if not more!
We said our goodbyes particularly to our two trusty porters and headed back to the lodge for hot chocolate and cake - as it was now 1730 and we had missed lunch. Next was a lovely hot shower and eventually dinner and an early night.
NB The one irritating thing that has crept in is people visiting the gorillas only seem interested in having their own photos taken posing in front of the gorillas rather than appreciating the beauty of the animal and watching their behaviour. Is this the product of the selfie era? Sadly the young guides were not strong enough in laying down the rules.