Close Encounter of the Large (and Small) Furry Kind
On August 1st, my driver, Paul, and I head out of Kigali for Volcanoes National Park in Northwest Rwanda. Before leaving town, I visited the Genocide Memorial which is astonishing. I’ll save the cheery topic of genocide for another post. As I probably said in a previous post, Rwanda is full of hills which have almost been completely covered with farms. The farms are in immaculate order unlike the farms I saw north in Uganda – one of the many differences between Ugandans and Rwandans. I was thinking the steep terrain forced them to keep them so tidy, but today I saw flat farms on the way back to Kigali and they, too, look spectacular. We arrive late afternoon at the Volcanoes Safari lodge which is siuated on a mountain spine overlooking two lakes and five volcano peaks. The mountains are steeper than any I have ever seen and are topped by a cone, a chopped off cone or a ragged edge. The valley between the lodge and the mountains is completely full of farms and villages. It is by far the most beautiful landscape I have ever seen. The air was cool and humid. From my “hut” I looked up at the closest volcano which was enshouded in clouds with thunder and lightning and I said “now that’s the home of the real King Kong”. I could barely sleep that night being so excited about my first encounter the next day…
Awake at 5 AM to get to the park headquarters around 7 AM. It takes over an hour to drive between the two even though a crow could make it in minutes. Around 8 AM the 56 permit holders are assembled in seven groups of eight with a guide, a guy with a machete (seeing men in Rwanda with machetes still bothers me today, but I did my best to ignore the past and the present) and any porters that may be requested. There are quite a few people who are really hiking beyond their physical stamina levels and hence the porters. I wondered why folks take more than they can carry themselves, but at least it employs more Africans. The porters also help people get up the mountain as needed. I was a bit concered when a woman in my group said she had a heart condition since my research had found many difficult hikes to get to gorillas. The mountains are steep, slippery, thickly overgrown and we are over 2500 meters in altitude. We are also met by an armed escort which is more than alarming since he carries an AK47 which is a human killer, not an elephant or buffalo killer. Poachers and rebels exist in the area.
We are headed to poorly named Group 13 which contains nineteen gorillas including a silverback (200 kilos pf gorilla force), blackbacks (young males), females, juveniles and babies down to five months in age. We drive first and then walk 45 minutes to the volcanic rock wall built around the park. We are told that the trackers (group of employees that set out around dawn to find where the family is located by first going to where they left them the day before and then following their movement) have located the gorillas and we have a fifty minute hike ahead. This is excellent since hikes can take up to four hours each way. After a hundred meters, the heart woman says we are going to fast and it is too difficult. Uh oh, I think! She pressed on with us, but there were a few times when I thought she would keel. We went very slowly with breaks every five minutes. I could have gotten frustrated, but I chanted “pole-pole, hakuna matata” knowing we would get our hour with the apes regardless of how long it would take to get there.
I spent the next 1-3/4 hours enjoying the not-so-steep hiking up and down slopes. Some members seemed to be freaked that a promised fifty minute hike was now twice as long, but that seemed to be fitting to me. I was a bit concerned that are slow pace would mean the gorillas would move and we would not catch them. We then started up the steep portion through thick bamboo forest that required ducking and turning regularly. I truly enjoyed my height on this hike! Although the hike got steeper, the bamboo drops a lot of leaves so it was much less muddy and I thought that made it a bit nicer. A half hour later we come across the trackers and I am ecstatic. There are five of them sitting down lined up across the hill. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch something and I look. Two gorillas are sitting there as a continuation of the line formed by the trackers as if they are one of them. I am soon right in front of them just giggling.
They are on a very steep bamboo hillside. There are a few, but they soon start moving down the hill and I get concerned that we’ll never see them again. The concern was soon alleviated when they stop moving and more come down from above us to join the party. We get a full hour with them and it is one of the best hours of my life living up to all of my extremely high expectations. My pictures for the first twenty minutes are disasters. This is by far the most difficult shooting situation I have encountered due to the dark forest, light green dense bamboo, filtered light from above through mist and the black subject matter. I finally get the hang of it setting my camera with some weird exposure values and I can jump ahead to tell you that I have some photos that are mind-blowing… stay tuned.
The hill is so steep that you have to carefully measure each step you take which certainly makes it interesting with a bunch of apes around. We found the silverback below the main group. He was just sitting and relaxing. I watched a five month old with its mother for quite a while. I spent about half my time photographing and half just sitting there watching the show. My favorites were the five month old baby, a baby feeding from mom (you could hear him), playing juveniles, one picking its nose and the silverback. While we were watching others, the silverback came up the slope and proceeded to stand, tip sideways, grab a tree with hands outstretched and raise one leg up another tree. EVERYTHING was showing and we decided later that he was showing it all on purpose lest we forget who is the real king of this jungle. At no time did I forget that reality!
The silverback sat on the hill above us and the guide, Pascal, took my photo while I sat three meters in front of it. While sitting there a baby chimp came up behind me and I froze worrying that dad was about to crunch me for being a few inches from his offspring. The guide got me up and down the hill and we backed off. The time flew by, but near the end we got to see a sizeable gorilla up in bamboo which is quite a sight. Before leaving one of the trackers came up to me and asked if I wanted to stay until 6 PM with them. I laughed. A few minutes later he asked again and I realized he was serious. He did not ask anyone else and I guess that is because I was the only single, I made the hike easily and therefore I could keep up with them and because I am American I could probably pay the right amount. This offer was too good to pass, but I had to break my “say no to nothing” philosophy for this adventure because I had a driver below and another hiker, Christine, was using the same driver to get to the lodge. I still regret this decision today, but it was the right one to make. Also, there were some open permits that day and I had a feeling I could get one the next day. On the way down, I had a good time meeting Russell and Caroline, Brit and Scot, living in Switzerland and in Rwanda to adopt fourteen month old Patrick.
Back at the lodge, a traditional dance by local boys, girls, women and men took place overlooking the lakes and mountains. I was hoping that it would not be hokey. The boys and men came out and did a very sinister dance with a very negative and scary aspect. I think all of us (Terry, Katie, Carol, Annelisa and Christine) thought that about it and it was serious being that we were in Rwanda. The girls then did a light-hearted, beautiful dance that lifted all. The boys joined the girls for a dance that featured couples and love. A couple more dances were interspersed with a man playing Rwandan guitar (flat concave wood with strings) and singing a beautiful song about the local area and people. It was all fantastic. What a day for gorillas and humans alike.
I’ll save the most thrilling moment of my life for the next post… stay tuned…
Tags: Travel
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