Today was our gorilla trek and what an awe inspiring privilege it was! We were up at just after 0500 and on the road for a very bumpy ride to the mountains at 0600. We arrived at HQ about 0745 where we were thoroughly briefed and met our guide, John. Maximum group sizes are 8 people, we had 6 from the truck and were joined by an American father & son duo. We then had a further 30mins of bumpy driving (shaken not stirred) to get to the trek starting point.

We trekked for just over an hour before being told we were in the vicinity of the Bweza Gorilla group whom we had been allocated to visit with for an hour. We had to leave our bags, sticks and water with the porters and then we went off track. This meant plunging down a steep slope through dense jungle following the path that the trackers were hacking out of the jungle with machetes.

When we hade scrambled down to our group it was to discover that they had joined with a second group and with too many adolescent males there were some displays of aggression which was interesting to watch. In the end our group took off and we spent most of our hour scrambling after them through the jungle. They would pause every now and then to eat and then move on again. It was difficult to get photos but was wonderful to just observe them. Tessa and I had a few close encounters. Because they were on the move it was difficult to know where the 10 of them were and at one point John who was just behind me (I was at the back of the group) warned me to stop as there was a gorilla just behind me. I turned around and a juvenile male was sitting there within touching distance. Another one joined him at which point he beat his chest and they moved off. Another time we realised that another one was behind us having a feed on the leaves. We watched him and then he decided to move off, walking right along next to us. Total "Wow" moments.

After our hour was up we had to scramble back up through the jungle following a newly macheted path to get us to the track. We walked back to where our porters were and were surprised at the distance we had covered in our hour of following these fast moving apes.

We walked back up the hill and collapsed in the shade under a tree at the "top of heaven" to eat lunch. We were presented with certificates and had an hour & half bumpy drive back to camp. It has been an amazing day spent among these incredible but severely endangered gorillas - there are only about 700 in the wild. They are only found in these mountains in Rwanda and Uganda. Both of us have taken time this afternoon to process our experiences.