Gorillas in the Mist.... and Rain!

Riiiiiiing! Riiiiiiiing! @#&#$! My 04:00 am wake up call! On a Saturday morning! Isn't that normally a time to order your last beer before you go home...? Well, reason for this early call was our 04:30 pick up at the hotel to go on a 2.5 hour drive to Kinigi. What's at Kinigi? Volcanoes Park. And what's at Volcanoes Park? Volcanoes of course! Some 8 of them, of which 3 are actually active. But that wasn't the reason we were going there. No, we were going to track down and observe a few of the remaining 650 gorilla's in the world. Yes, we were on the hunt for King Kong!

The driver came on time, we loaded up the car with water, food, camera's and spare clothes and we were on our way. During the ride I was trying to get back to dreamland, but as I soon found out, that is impossible in this country. Rwanda is not nicknamed Land of Thousand Hills for nothing. That implies that there's basically no such thing as a straight road. The entire ride was a continuous mountain road and one with many holes in it too. No way you could even think of dozing off.

The driver was a fast dude too. He was racing this road, which - by the way - was unlit and thus pitch dark. After less than two hours we were at the head office of the park keepers. There we got introduced to our guides and the rest of the group of 8, all from England. We also found out that we might actually come as close as 7 meters from a gorilla. Seven meters! Now that was stuff to get excited about. Other instructions included not using flash lights and it is okay to look a gorilla in the eye. It is okay!!! For you non-Dutchies out there, last year a woman in a Dutch zoo was attacked by a gorilla named Bokito, which got excited as she had stalked him for the past months and escaped his cage. Immediately all the publicity hungry experts came forward saying that you should not look a gorilla in the eye. Yeah right! And Global Warming only exists in the imagination of Al Gore...

First we had to drive another 30 minutes on a very rocky road to get to the foot of the mountain. The road looked like the surface of the moon (or the surface of the Hollywood studio the moon landing was filmed in, depending on which story you believe). At the destination we got our climbing stick and we could hire a Sherpa for our bags if we wanted. Later we found out that the Sherpa's came more in handy for carrying people than bags.

We were now at 2,400 meters above sea level, the air was already thinning and we still had a 500 meter climb ahead of us. The trackers - who are the guys that go up early in the morning to locate the gorilla's - radioed in that they had found the kongs. We were ready to find them! To hunt them down! To smoke them out of their cages! Ehhh.... No! That was someone else.

Luckily, the weather cooperated. It was dry with quite cool temperatures, which is not that surprising given our height. The climb started pretty relaxed. Just a slightly uphill walk. That soon changed. Within ten minutes we were climbing. I mean climbing! The ground was wet and slippery and the way up was steep. The path, or whatever was left of it was totally overgrown, full of nettles and often blocked by tree trunks and rocks. The guides hadn't told us how far and how high up the hike would be. I guess they both passed their Expectation Management training.

About 2.5 hours later we finally came close to the gorilla's. We were now at 2,900 meters. Unfortunately for us, the animals were not so kind, as to find a spot for themselves which we could easily approach. No, we had to do some serious climbing on vertical mountainsides followed by lowering yourself using lianes ("Me Tarzan, You Insane") to land on a ledge. This is not an activity for people suffering from vertigo. From there on we had to slowly move a few meters and then..... we saw our first gorilla! It was just sitting there on the bushes some 4 meters below us eating.

At first you remain very still and whisper "look! there's one!" and watch in amazement. Then soon you see more. Gorilla's travel in groups and stick together. There is usually one male leader, a silverback. Our group had 9 gorilla's, including 2 kids and one 18 month old baby. That baby was of the "ohhhh, he's so cute. I want one!" type.

The gorilla's basically did one thing: eat! It seems that they eat 15% of their bodyweight on a daily basis. For me that would mean 13.5 kilos of food every day! Where's that buffet??? And..... Don't bother to calculate. Yes, I weight 90 kilos. All beer muscles of course... And you know what these animals do continuously? Fart! And they don't even apologise!

They moved on as we got closer. At first I thought it was because of us, but I realised later that people do not really bother them at all. Apart from the occasional glance, it seemed like we were not there. as long as we didn't annoy them, everything seemed fine.

At some point we saw the silverback. The others are quite cute and not even that big. An adult would be around 1.50 meters I guess. The silverback, however, is the big strong gorilla! Now ladies, don't get too excited now. I know most of you have King Kong fantasies, wanting to be swept away with that big strong hand, of that big strong beast, with that soft heart. You girls all get weak knees and mushy in the head with that thought, don't you?

The big boss is obviously the most mean and aggressive looking. The others seem to be quite relaxed, even friendly. Remember the 7 meter sign back at the office? Foggetaboutit! You can almost come as close as you want. At some moments I was as close as 1 meter from a gorilla. Not the silverback, but the others. A kid gorilla even used my leg as a pole to swing around me as he needed to get to his mother. That was awesome!

At times I wondered if the experience was 'real' enough, but we were not in a zoo, nor in a circus. We were at 2,900 meter in the middle of a rain forest jungle in the middle of Africa. These animals were real! Okay, probably more or less used to people by now, but still... They were in their natural habitat and there are only a few of them left in the world.

We spent about an hour with them and then it was time to head back. Almost exactly at that time it started to rain. No, not drizzle... Rain! with a vengeance! There we were, on top of a tropical volcano with a tropical rain pouring down on us. Going up a mountain is tiresome but doable. Going down a mountain is tough and if it rains: nearly impossible! I spent 500 meters downwards slipping and sliding. By the time I was finally down, I looked like a very muddy bigfoot. I was an exhausted, soaked, mud-covered, but very very happy guy! What an experience!

PS: Below is a video showing a gorilla doing what gorilla's do best: Munching away! a real Burger King Kong