Gorillas

The campsite was amazing, the balcony overlooking this massive tree covered mountain shrouded in mist, it was raining for sometime too after we arrived. I think it actually rained every single night in Uganda. rain fall is 1-1.5 Meters a year! which is responsible for the lush landscape.

our group of 8 was split into two dueto the timing of permit applications, disapointed. Three of us joinedgroup R, fairly short trek in the bush brought us into contact withthe lead trekkers and the Gorillas. The silverback was huge, approxweight 250Kg. At the begining of our encounter I was crouching down to have my photo taken and suddenly someone said "dont move",  a little after I felt something lean against my back, one of the smaller gorillas had come to say hi.

We had some great shots from as little as 4-5 meters.They also had a very young one with them, total in group 19. The Silverback is very dominant and does not tolerate any misbehaviour, a few times he grabbed and broke these 10-20 cm thick branches to dislodge other gorillas in his pack that climbed up while he was on the ground.

I wasshushed by Missy for asking one of the guys to take my photo, dealtwith her later on the waterfall walk. We got back by 10.30, no signof other groups, we are due to leave here as soon as we regroup so wehave to wait. Missy is having a tizzy fit, she is driven fear ofdisapproval and gets anxious if we are likely to make other peoplewait. Eventually a group of us decide to do the waterfall walk, Ihave a swim at the third and largest fall despite Missy’s anxiety.We were soaked by the time we got there, this has been the type ofwalk we expected earlier, pouring rainforest rain, mud, sliding allover. Walking stick was a godsent throughout, unlike this morningwere i felt unnecessarily dependent on it.

Once we got back, had to wait another 4hours for return of H group! They had had to hack through the bushand taken 4 hours to find the gorillas while climbing up and downsome very steep wet hills. They were shattered and by now we were toolate to make our trip so stayed another night.