Kisoro and Gorilla Tracking

July 21, 2010

The next day, we took a car to Kisoro.

A bit of background information on my Gorilla Tracking: I read about Gorilla tracking when I got to Arusha. There are about 400 mountain gorillas left in the world, half of them are in Bwindi Impenetrable Rainforest, in Uganda, and the rest are in the Virunga Mountains, which are spread over Congo, Uganda and Rwanda. Permits can be booked up to 2 years in advance, and they are often booked several months before the date. Thus, based on my time frame, it was extremely difficult to get a permit. I tried many places, but nothing was open. There were a few cancellations, but either someone snapped up the permit before I did, or the process was just too complicated (in one I would have had to arrange a meeting with a safari guide to pick up the permit and then get transportation to the area). In Uganda however, there were suddenly many cancellations because of the terrorist bombing that killed about 70 people during the World Cup Final. I went the week following this event. One person in our group dropped out because his parents were too upset to let him go, but I figured that it would be even safer in Uganda following the bombing, since the security would be even tighter. At the mall in Kampala, we got searched before going into the building. At Mgahinga, you can only reserve 2 weeks in advance, since the gorillas often cross in to the DRC or Rwanda. They were booked out, so I went on stand by, and luckily for me, three people did not show up, so I got to go! I was so excited!

A bit about Kisoro, before I launch into my gorilla trip--Kisoro is famous for honey and gorillas.

While I did the gorilla tracking, Laura did golden monkey tracking. Golden monkeys are also endangered, and only live in the Virunga area. Usually, it takes 1-3 hours to find the gorillas. I was lucky that day, since a group of Germans had a car with them, and the car drove us part of the way, so we save about 2 hours of walking time. From the camp on the mountains, we hiked for about 35 minutes, and then I saw a gorilla. When the guides approach, they make a noise to warn the gorillas that they are approaching. The noice is supposed to mean, "hey, here is some food!". It sounds like, "MEarrrrgh...MWOAM". Anyhow, the guides were grunting this loudly, and then I heard a rustling noise, and saw my first gorilla! I was so excited! As we climbed higher, the tracker cut some bushes down with a machete. The group, comprised on 13 individuals, has 3 silver backs and 2 babies. the silverbacks are the older males. We saw all the gorillas in that group. The babies ride on their mother's back, and the mother would climb a tree. The baby would peer at us from the branches, and then get off and eat by himself. The German girl got knocked over by a gorilla. She was standing in the path, and the gorilla sort of made an effort to go around her, but then bumped into her. She was scared, but I was super jealous, since she got to touch a gorilla! People asked me if I was scared, but I was not scared at all. I kind of thought of them as dogs...even though thay are 97% the same DNA sequence as humans! The alpha male, an enormous silverback, got annoyed when we got too close, but the smaller males and the females did not care. One walked so close by me, I could have easily patted it with my hand.

That night, we ran into money issues. My bank has a daily limit of $500, which is the cost of the gorilla permit. My friend Laura's card would not work. So, we essentially had no cash. Luckily, we ran into an Irish man and his daughter, who is half Chinese. They live in Beijing, and were very kind to us, and lent us money to pay for our room, so we could make our way over to Rwanda. While the guy at Ugandan customs said that Irish do not need a visa since they are friends of Uganda, on the Rwandan side Irish people do need a visa, and they cannot just buy it at the border. Since it has been our experience that East Africa is very corrupt, we asked another group (they had the same problem) about bribing, but they said that the Rwandans would not accept bribes. Although I was really sad that our Irish friends could not come with us, I was really happy that Rwanda is not corrupt.