Gorillas in the Mist!

Hello! We're back in Kampala, capital of Uganda after a short but amazing trip to view a family of mountain gorillas in their native jungle habitat. We weren't planning to do a gorilla trek, but events conspired against us in our efforts to reach Murchison Falls in the northern part of Uganda (details to be revealed in our next blog entry), so we headed south, first to a very relaxing camp on an island in Lake Bunyoni, then further south to see the gorillas.

Byoona Amagara resort was one of the most beautiful places we've visited in Africa. It's set on an island in the middle of a picturesque volcano crater lake, which required a one-hour paddle in a dugout canoe from the nearest road. All along the lake were lush, green, steep terraced hills, with fields of potatoes and other crops reaching up to the very tops of the hills. The best thing about this resort was the food - it was awesome! We had fresh talapia fish from the lake every night, mexican quesidillas for lunch, and potent rum balls for dessert - certainly not food we've seen anywhere else in Africa.

While at this resort we ran into a few people who had organized treks to view mountain gorillas. There's fewer than 700 mountain gorillas left in the wild (and none in captivity), all concentrated in the shared border area between Uganda, Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, which was formerly known as Zaire). It's expensive and difficult to obtain a permit to view the gorillas in Uganda and Rwanda, but that isn't the case in DRC, where permits are readily available and cost substantially less money. There's not many tourists who want to venture into DRC, as it's just recovering from a decade-long civil war, but we'd heard it was relatively safe within DRC near the Ugandan border where the gorillas usually hang out. So we took a chance and booked a one-day trip into a country that, despite it's name, isn't very democratic, is barely a republic, but definitely is Congo! How could we resist?

Our day started very early as we piled into a pair of minivans with 20 Spanish tourists and drove an hour to the Uganda-DRC border. At the border we met a couple of Brits, Helen and Baz, with whom we spent the rest of our day gorilla treking with. Border formalities and briefings on do's and don'ts when meeting gorillas (including what to do when they charge at you!) took a couple of hours. We split up into groups of seven or eight people to visit five different families of gorillas. Finally we were off into Congo! The scenery was spectacular, the road was almost non-existent and it felt like we were in a very remote part of the world - definately Africa's Heart of Darkness.

After an hour of driving we continued on foot through fields of sorgum and potatoes and passed tiny mud thatched huts of the local Congalese. The locals were curious to see us and peered from their huts and from behind trees to say hello. After 2 1/2hrs of walking we reached the dense jungle of Parc des Virungas and started to see signs of the gorillas, they were close at hand our armed guides told us. Zoe's first sighting of a gorilla was a 200kg black back male gorilla charging towards her! A gorilla charging you in the DRC, unbelievable story but true! Fortunately the guides protected us and the gorilla was only marking his territory and letting us know who was in charge in his jungle. It was hard to crouch down in submission as we had been told rather than flee!

Visitors are limited to spending an hour with the gorillas. This passed very quickly but was an amazing and fascinating experience to see these wonderful animals in their natural setting and to get a taste of Diane Fossey's gorillas in the mist. The gorillas are quite playful and gentle and behaved a little like chimpanzees. The family we saw had 3 adolescent males and 2 infants who were very cute. The rangers told us that the mother had, unfortunately died and the infants were being looked after by the adolescent males.

Visiting the gorillas was icing on the cake for what has been so far an already very good trip to Africa.

Like everything else in DRC: the size of the countryand it's primates,the beers are very large. Back at the border we celebrated seeing the gorillas with Helen & Baz by quaffing several of Congo's premier 720ml beers. The beer is called Primus which the Brits amongst us had a chuckle at as Primus is a make of British camp stove, so Primus beer must be good fuel!

Next is a few relaxing days on the beaches south of Mombasa before we fly home.