Meeting the Gorillas

From Lake Bunyonyi, we drove through the impenetrable forest to Ruhija, were we asked at the visitor centre of the Bwindi National Park for a gorilla tracking the next morning. It was no problem, we only had to show up the next morning.

We first got a little entertainment from the local village with singing and dancing, followed by a short instruction, before we took the cars (luckily we got a ride with somebody else) to get to the starting point of our hike to find the gorillas. Trackers were already looking for them in the forest and our lady guide got regular updates about their progress.

We were a group of 7 tourists, 2 rangers with guns, our guide and a couple of porters, carrying our backpacks und helping everybody along the difficult terrain.

We were told the gorillas are moving in our direction and when they had an idea, where we could reach them, we started into the very dense forest. One of the rangers cut a way with his machete and we followed him one after the other. We went down a steep hillside and when we reached a river, we could already see the first gorillas on the other side.

When we finally reached them, they were sitting on a big tree but decided to move on, while we watched them easily climb down the tree.

We followed them to the river where we could watch them take a drink and cross the river, which we did accordingly.

The gorilla group we had tracked was called Oruzogo and consisted of 10 gorillas, including a one year old infant.

We spent a long time following them and moving around the group, when they finally came all down from the trees to take a rest. They seemed completely undisturbed by us, lurking around with our cameras, and moved past us a couple of times so we couldn’t keep the advised distance.

Afterwards we had to climb the steep mountain again and make our way back to the cars, but the experience was something really special we will never forget in our lives.