Miss Lily

We have moved back towards the east of Uganda after some days in the mist of the western mountains. It has been many kilometers and rain and the roads are filled with potholes and under construction so it in itself is an adventure. Keep an eye out for YouTube clips of people bouncing off their seats later :) 

 

The landscape in Uganda is absolutely beautiful with hills full of trees but also square patterns from the growing of crops everywhere. The patterns are nice to look at but once you see  it from the perspective that many years ago wildlife had its home all the way from the capital city of Kampala out west compared to the 14 hour drive you need in order to reach it now, it's no longer only a treat for the eye but a stab in the heart. That mankind can do much harm on this planet is a fact so often shown on this trip and it hurts to see how much forest is gone due to farming. It also shows how necessary the national parks in Uganda, Rwanda and Congo are in order to give the animals their space once stolen from them. 

 

The animals I'm talking about and the goal of our trip out west is of course the Mountain Gorillas that lives in the mountain forests together with buffalos and elephants. They only let tourists spend one hour per day in a group of maximum 8-9 people with the family of gorillas in the different parks so you need to apply for a permit in advance in order to see which park and country you are signed up for. Our permit was for Mgahinga National Park  in the far southwest of Uganda, close to the Virunga Volvanos park where Karen Blixen once opened the worlds eyes regarding the situation of the gorillas survival. The late 1960s saw the Virunga Conservation Area (VCA) of Rwanda’s national park reduced by more than half of its original size to support the cultivation of Pyrethrum. This led to a massive reduction in mountain gorilla population numbers by the mid-1970s. (Wikipedia.com) Today there is a bit more than 800 of the mountain gorillas left and thanks to the great conservation work it is very slowly increasing. 

 

We set out for our trek on a Saturday morning, drove through some Pygmy villages on our way up the mountain and was after a pretty big climb up to the park sports office greeted by our ranger Jona and Nicholas, a police officer that was accompanying us up the hill together with his AK47 on the hip. "Just in case of buffalos and elephants, not to hurt anyone" Jona told us. ;)

Before we started our day he also told us that the reason they take care of the gorillas was so that history did not repeat it self like it had with the Dinosaurs. Before there was a lot of them but due to man there was none left. Haha we all tried our best not to laugh out loud at that comment since it was all in good thought. 

 

We walked through the forest up and down the paths jumping over buffalo dung and red ants that likes to bite. We were lucky as the tracking rangers earlier found the gorillas not too far from our starting point. We had heard stories of hours and hours of trekking through dense bush with machetes cutting the way and people with mud up to their knees. We only needed to use the machete once and were very lucky with not too much rain or hot sun. The altitude got to me and in the uphill climbs it felt like I never had exercised in my whole life. (It has not been easy to work out these 5 weeks but still)

 

An hour into the rain forest we found the trackers and we sneaked into the bamboo where we saw the family of gorillas resting. It was a family of 9 including 4 silver backs, 1 black back,  2 females, 2 juveniles age 3 and 5 years and to our amazement a very recent addition to the family as one of the females held a baby gorilla only two days old! She was very protective and it was not until the end of their rest we caught some glimpse of the brown little thing from time to time. 

 

It took a while for me to realize that what I thought was a group of them lying down actually was ONE (!) gorilla, the dominant silver back. He was massive, probably two and a half times me if not three. Rolling around grabbing his feet in a nice stretching pose I could not get my head around how big his arms were. I felt an urge to walk up and crawl into them and get a big gorilla cuddle, which the juveniles got from time to time when they were not laying on top of a tree eating or fighting each other. The females were cleaning each other and the big male while the other silver backs and black back was lower in the valley eating their way up to us slowly. It was not until our time was up that we saw them and had to move around as they made their way towards the next bamboo bush. No one thought of counting how many we actually had around us.. 

 

When our time was up we reluctantly left them to eat and headed back. It was more downhill on our way back and  we were about half way when we found the forth silver back that the rangers thought still was in the valley. I was second last in the group and it was dense bush so after hearing a sound I've never heard before but could guess my way to as a gorilla charging all I could see was the people in front of me running towards me and in the corner of my eye I saw Nicholas with his gun running passed me towards the sound ready to shoot. Before we had time to react we heard Jona scream that all was ok. He had come too close around the corner and he and the gorilla scared each other. We saw him  in the bush but he left us alone after that. WOW Quite an experience, not every day that happens to you right? My heart was pounding even though I was not in the front so I can only imagine how it must have been seeing a giant gorilla coming towards you hitting his chest and screaming like that. 

 

I will never forget this day; Gorillas in the mist, Mzungus in the mud.