Had an initial good sleep but seem to be in a pattern of waking after 4 hours or so and not wanting to go back to sleep. I'm sure it is something to do with the hard surfaces I sleep on. The mattress on this bed is the same slab of concrete found throughout East Africa and is the same as sleeping in the tent. I cannot wait to get home to my own bed with crispy cotton sheets!
It has rained overnight so today will be a muddy affair, but who cares so long as we find our gorillas.
Up at 5am to get ready and make sure I didn't leave anything behind. There are nasty little fire ants here so it is necessary to yuck your pants into your socks otherwise they crawl up you leg and you get a nasty shock when they find a warm spot in your nether regions! Have breakfast, make our lunch, as we don't know how long we will be trekking for, and off we go in two groups via Land Cruiser to the National Park Headquarters.
You may recall I said how clean this town is; driving along the streets all we could see was man, woman and child brunch sing, sweeping, picking up little and literally spring cleaning the road, open drains and bridges. They don't get paid to do this and they do it each day, qa patch of road or drain or whatever is cleaned and with everyone doing their bit, the town remains spotless and the community folk take pride in what they achieve! Could teach all of us a thing or two that's for sure.
We arrive at HQ where a nice hot cup of good African coffee awaits us. Linley didn't want to hold anyone up during the trek, and didn't think she would be able to do a 4 - 8 hour walk in the muddy and possibly steep conditions so she had told Victor she would not go. That is a big decision to make considering our individual permits cost us $ US750 but Victor insisted she came. Once here, Victor found a good guide, Fidel, who already had trackers out looking for the gorilla families, and guaranteed a short walk of around an hour or two. The others on the Intrepid group wanted to do a long trek, so with their group of 5 filled I opted to do the short trek with Linley and Chris.
After a short briefing we set off with our guide again in the 4WD for a 20 minute drive to the start point. Fidel was in touch with his trackers from time to time to check on their progress in finding our gorilla family.
The family being tracked was called Sabyinyo and consisted of 15 family members, headed by the main number one silverback, the Chief, a deputy and a third younger male whose silver was just starting to show, who would eventually come up the ranks. There were a seven females and five babies of different ages but up to four years old.
We started walking through acres and acres and endless acres of potatoes, beans, elderberries and pyrethrum flowers. Three towering volcanos dominated the cloudy skyline and the rich, wet volcanic soil just fell off our boots, not sticking at all. What a fabulous environment to be in. Women and children were digging the potatoes, red ones and creamy white ones. Zillions of them! And here we were walking along through their mounded crops off to find mountain gorillas. Quite surreal! After about half an hour we came to a deep concrete channel which bordered a small stream. Four thick bamboo canes bridged the stream for us to walk over stepping side to side. Shades of the Kokoda trail, although there I only recall one or two tree trucks spanning a waterway. These canes were a foot length wide at least and although wet, we're not really slippery. Only about ten or twelve sideways steps were needed and we were then off the farmland and immediately in a dense bamboo forest with many eucalypts interspersed along the way. The bamboo thinned out somewhat and rain forest crowded in. There was plenty of mud but not ankle deep and smelly like Kokoda. We walked for about half an hour more and came to a clearing where we were met by Fidel's 3 trackers. Words were exchanged and we were told to get our camera out and leave our backpacks with the porter who came along. This was it! The trackers had found 3 of the family; number two silverback and two females. They were right there. Right in front of me about 7 metres away. Tears sprang into my eyes. I was in absolute awe of what I was part of. We are supposed to stay 7 metres away from them but if hey come to us we just move a little as we are told by the guide. We followed these 3 into a clearing, camera chattering away. Photos of us taken with the gorillas in the background. Then the silverback decided it was time to have a run to the other end of the clearing. Man do these huge animals make a thumping sound with each footfall! He was headed my way, thumping along and the guide just eased me back a little whilst he passed by me with a metre between us. Bill, I apologise for saying this but..... Oh, My, God! More tears over which I had no control. It was such an excitement and...... I can't really explain it.
Our permit allows us to spend one hour with the family. We were there about 10 minutes when Fidel motioned us to walk on through the forest. 'The rest of the family are a couple of hinder metres away, come on". We didn't need telling twice, we were going to see more. A short walk later and there was a small baby climbing around in a tree. Just below him in a small clear patch, hidden almost by tall bushes, was number 1 silverback. He was just immense! Damn those blasted tears, I need to take photos in focus. The trackers machete away a path for us toward the silverback and we walk toward him. Then we can see several females and babies, then even more females. Behind us, crashing up high in the bamboo was obviously more family members. Bamboo was bending and crashing in a strange display as we couldn't yet see any gorilla. Then it fell to the ground with a crash and bounded along to the rest of the family. We could see number 3 silverback behind some bamboo and not very visible. A bigger baby was in a clear patch on our side of the bamboo, chewing away oh his bamboo root. Suddenly number 3 stood up, beat his chest and came crashing through the bamboo like the league players crash through their banners at a big final! Bloody hell, he was only like 3 feet in front of of us now. I won't say it in full again Bill, but OMG, is this real? What happened to the 7 metre rule? Well, that just got chucked out the window as we spent the next 45 minutes within about 3 - 4 feet of number 1 silverback, a female suckling her little baby and a couple of other bigger babies. Eventually number 2 silverback and the two females we first encountered, came crashing through the undergrowth to join the rest of the family. And there we were, humans in absolute awe of these amazing creatures, and the gorillas, not really caring that we were there and so close to them. Our time was up and we quietly walked away from one of the most amazing encounters I have ever known. This is up there with Kilimanjaro in the 'I have done it' stakes.