We paid $500 whopping dollars for gorilla trekking permits. This is the price for non-residents. Rwandese residents pay merely $30! We wanted to make the most of the trip by trekking the largest, hardest to get to gorilla family, the Susa. There are 39 gorillas part of this group! However, other people we talked to said it was easy to find and they only trekked 2 hours to find them. We hinted for our guide that we wanted to trek more and to go a more round about way.
Besides the 4 of us, there was a British father and his daughter who were living in Tanzania, a French-Lebanese-Brazilian woman who works at the World Bank, and a German visiting physics professor lecturing at the Kigali University.
Our expectation was a relatively easy day, trekking 2 hours. As we hiked higher and higher, we still hadn’t seen any gorillas. Our guide kept telling us, Oh it’ll be 40 minutes. An hour later, we would ask, how much longer. The response? In another hour! We were trekking uphill the entire time and in the jungle, ducking under branches, getting stung by nettles, trudging through the mud….It seemed like we were going to trek all the way to the summit of the mountain we were on! It was quite surreal as there were 2 military men with machine guns guarding us, one in the front and one trailing behind. We were climbing higher and higher. I was sweating through all my clothes like I had never sweated before. I was getting scraped up with the branches and the nettles. As we were nearing the top, one of the military men was actually making a path for us, whacking at the bush with his machete.
At last, we were at the launching point to where the gorillas were. No food, water bottles, or our backpacks were allowed near the gorillas. We weren’t permitted to even throw banana peels on the ground as the bananas had been handled and touched by humans. Gorillas are susceptible to human germs. In fact, if you are sick, you cannot go near the gorillas.
Finally, after FOUR hours of trekking uphill, we had come to the point to see these creatures and it was…as I can quite honestly say, simply AMAZING. They were larger than life. It’s incredible to see them up close with no bars or a cage between us. I saw a mother and the baby she was carrying for; I saw a silverback gorilla yawn; I saw the younger gorillas playfully rolling on the ground; and then I witnessed a gorilla attack. I was scared completely shitless. So, the way it happened, the number 1 gorilla, the head of the clan, got uncomfortablely close to our group. If the gorilla gets too close, we were warned, you should squat and pay deference to the gorilla as a sign of respect to his dominance. We all got down as number 1 was behind a bush right in front of us! It was quite nerve wracking as I could have reached out and touched him!
Then suddenly, one of the gorilla trackers was backing up from number 1. The gorilla tracker fell on the ground and then he picked himself up and ran! The gorilla went after him and then all of us went running off to squat. The gorilla screeched and went after him. I thought for sure the man was a goner and that he was being ripped from limb to limb.
Luckily, he was fine, thank God! The story was that the other gorillas crowded around the man. Number 1 even grabbed his arm but he recognized him as a regular tracker and waved off the other gorillas who were circling him!
Our guide was laughing at the tracker’s stupid move because he showed the fact that he was scared by running off and the gorillas thought that he was a threat. I’m glad he could laugh about it as I was still catching my breath from being scared out of my mind!
This was certainly a memory that I will never forget! We had to leave because the gorillas found us a threat by being associated with the stupid tracker! It was unfortunate because we didn’t spend that much time with the gorillas and we had trekked forever to reach them! We turned back to go down the mountain and thank goodness, it didn’t take much time to go down although it was strenuous on the quads and the knees. I was dying with pain with all the pressure on the legs. We also didn’t bring enough water or snacks with us as we weren’t expecting to be trekking for long. Instead of 2 hours, it turned out to be nearly 8 hours! It was all worth it as we got the trek we wanted (and then some!) and got to spend time with these incredible creatures.
