Gorillas!

 Sunday, August 25

We left the lodge at 6:40 this morning and went to the park headquarters. There we were assigned to groups of eight people each, and received a briefing  about the system of gorilla trekking in the park. Our group was led by Fidele, the same ranger who had taken us to Buhanga yesterday.

We learned that there are now over 1100 mountain gorillas across the Virunga Mountains in Congo, Uganda and Rwanda. In the Volcanoes Park there are estimated to be about 600, up from 200 in 1978. Ecotourism has been vital to the preservation of the landscape, the wildlife, and the local communities. There are 22 families in Volcanoes that have been habituated to human interaction, some for research and the others for tourism. Each tourism family is only visited for an hour at a time, twice in a week. 

Our designated family today (Sabyinyo) is one of the largest with 17 members including 2 silverbacks. It was also one of the first families to be habituated.  We started on the trail by about 8:15 but the trackers had set out about three hours earlier. At the time we started walking, the trackers had not yet located the family. We were extremely lucky that our family was only an hour’s hike away— some families go much higher up the mountain in search of water-containing plants as the dry season progresses.

We saw about 14 of the family members, including a mother with a tiny baby and two pairs of mating adults. The soundtrack to the latter activity was pretty amazing. The family seemed unconcerned by our presence, walking around us and in one case “through” our observation line.  We had to lean back and hold our breath to get out of their way.  Two gorillas brushed against Katharine’s pants leg and gently shoved the next person over a bit to get through. The one exception was the baby’s mother, who kept her treasure hidden behind or beneath her much of the time.  At various points in our hour with them, the gorillas meandered to new locations, and we followed, ducking through bamboo tunnels and clambering over vines and other underbrush. While humans are told to stay 5 meters away from the gorillas, most of our visit was from a distance of about 1.5 meters, by the gorillas’ choice.