a few weeks ago the wife of a colleague asked me if I wouldn't like to go and see the gorillas (yes, THE gorillas in the mist - in danger of extinction and only about 700 left in the world - half of them in rwanda). I was just about to reply that I'd love to but couldn't afford the permit at this point in time, that it was something on my list of things to do before leaving the country eventually. but before I could say anything she adds 'for free' - well, HELL YEAH!
turns out she had a group of japanese journalists coming here to film a documentary on the impact of illegal mining on the mountain gorillas and they needed 'tourists' that they could film. well - I'll gladly be a tourist and get an amazing experience for free.
so last week we had our date with the primates. we left to go to ruhengeri on wednesday afternoon - in 2 cars; I was a bit scared as to whether bertinchen would make it all the way without misbehaving. but she was marvelous and got us to ruhengeri in one piece; although I have to admit I was a bit dizzy by the time we arrived; between the serpentine roads and the inevitable shaking and clonking of the car... well - there's worse.
I remember ruhengeri as this freezing cold place in the mountains and had brought a lot of warm clothes; surprisingly it wasn't half as cold as I remembered it being. we got up at 6am, had breakfast and then headed to the tourism office to get assigned to a particular gorilla family for our visit. there was tea and coffee there and a lot of people waiting to be assigned themselves.
it was the first group of monkeys I saw that day. predominantly middle-aged people in brand spanking new trekking outfits which they had almost certainly bought specifically for their once in a lifetime trip to the gorillas. but the most fascinating group consisted of a group of students from the US - they were apparently on a college trip and as part of that they also took a trip to the gorillas. now - gorilla trekking is what it says - trekking. it's not like the safaris you do in kenya and tanzania where you traipse from your hotel room into a comfortable car and only stick your head out the top to admire all the animals as you drive through incredible landscapes. in this one you get down and dirty; and there's no way around it.
these kids can't have been more than maybe 16, 18 years old and looked to me like proper city kids who had never had a face to face encounter with a live cow in their lives; and here they were stranded in the middle of nowhere in rwanda - waiting to go and see some monkeys. all wearing their city clothes and shoes - i.e. anything ranging from white fashionable but completely useless trainers to (my personal favourite) blue leather boots; the kind you wear to go out on the town; not the volcanoes...
they were all standing around taking pictures and chattering away. eventually the whale of the group got out the DEET insect repellent - at this point I must also say: if you want to go to africa withouth having to worry about all sorts of f***ed up diseases then you should come to rwanda. it's a safe country in that respect - yes, there is malaria, but it's not nearly as prevalent as in other countries - especially when you move in the environments these people are likely to move in; there are amoebas, and there's bilharzia - but I wouldn't know of any other weird disease that you'd be likely to contract.
anyway - back to the gringos - they were literally showering in their mosquito repellent to the point where the cloud was so big that I couldn't help but breathe in a good lungful and then couldn't get the stuff out of my nostrils for a few minutes... we were at 2000 metres above sealevel, it's cool and I couldn't see a single flying insect. but apparently there were some because suddenly the girls started crying out at an insect on someone's bag; a grasshopper. they must have come from a big city. and I had a laugh.
anyway - after observing our brother and sister apes for a bit we were assigned to our family and set off. first bit is by car over a ridiculuous wanna-be paved road - but really it's more like a field full of rocks and I will never stop being amazed at what a car tyre can hold out! so we were bumping over that 'road' towards the place where we would be leaving the car and continuing on foot. shaken not stirred we started off, first through fields cultivated with 'irish potatoes' (the definition of which is: not sweet potatoes), african daisies which are used to make insect repellent (if only the stuff smelled like the flowers!), beans, and in between the fields the cows were grazing. I always find such scenes romantic; little straw huts scattered among fields of blooming stuff, cows and goats and children. but of course it's not really that romantic. people in the rural areas of rwanda - basically everywhere - are poor and make a subsistence living off the produce their farm, land is getting scarcer and scarcer and therefore families have to produce more with less - a challenge. but wonderful landscape - and in the backdrop the volcanoes which absolutely fascinate me.
eventually our path hit the wall which demarcates the boundary between the fields and the volcanoes national park. we climbed over the wall and were instantly surrounded by thick vegetation. off we trudged up the slopes of the sabyinyo volcano. it was steep and humid and absolutely amazing. it was also muddy and not very easy to not take one step forward and two steps back ;-)) all the while the film crew were running up and down the path, sometimes we had to stop and wait for their commando before walking on again; after all we were in a movie! well, a documentary - but who cares. all the while as we were climbing higher and higher up the mountain the guides were in radio contact with the trackers - by the time we'd entered the national park they still hadn't found the gorillas... but on and up we walked and then suddenly they said that they'd spotted them about another half an hour from where we currently were. we were mostly following paths made by humans and/or animals and eventually we took a sharp right turn straight through the thicket - the porter with the machete ahead cutting down the most obstructive plants. and then we were told to stop and take off our bags; we had to leave them a bit away from the gorillas. and just as we had stopped we heard this grunting sound and saw a black fluffy back disappear in the trees.
we slowly and quietly moved across to the spot where the 'hirwa' (lucky) family was chilling out after their breakfast. it was on a very steep slope and we had to perch together holding on to trees so as not to slide right into the gorilla family. and there they were. the silver back, lying face down on the ground; only his tremendously impressive silver back visible. his 6 wives surrounding him and his 5 kids playing. two of them just kept chasing each other round a bamboo stem, then every 5 minutes or so they would stop completely and not move for a couple of minutes only to then start all over again. others were bouncing off branches and practising the climbing part of being a gorilla. we were about 7 metres away and it was just incredible to watch these animals who behave so much like humans. and because they're so used to seeing people every day they will look at you with mild interest and then turn back to doing whatever they had been doing before you turned up to stare at them for exactly 60 minutes.
but then there are the less human parts to being a gorilla: one female came walking up the hill with a ginormous pooh hanging out of her backside - and she didn't seem to notice at all; quietly sat down - the thing still hanging there - and started munching on some bamboo shoots. a little while later she got back up and just pulled the pooh out with her foot, dropped it and never mind the twigs that were still protruding from her behind marched off to the next bamboo shoot.
I was at first not very impressed by our spot as it was steep and the vegetation quite thick so you couldn't really see them all very well. and a couple of females were on the other side of the mountain ledge - so after a while we went over there to have a look - and that was impressive. one of them was sat supported only by two bamboo twigs about 2 metres above the ground eating. another one was sat on the ground with her arms in a distinctly human position, looking at us with a surly face - they seem so similar to us when you see them like that. and there we were, all of us perched against the mountain on an extremely steep and muddy and slippery slope when suddenly the silver back had obviously decided it was time to move on and led his family in a perfect line along in front of our stunned faces. 1 metre away... we could have easily touched them if that had been allowed. and then they disappeared into the undergrowth. who knows when I'll see them next time.
and we then had to climb back up towards our bags from where we started our descent back to the village. going down was way quicker than walking up - partly because it was so muddy we were skidding half the way, holding on to the bamboo stems to avoid a mudbath and generally chattering away excitedly.
once down again we had to drive back to the tourism office to pick up our fantastic certificates. on the way henri's samurai slid into a ditch and got stuck. and because I love a good adventure I got excited and decided to show off the qualities of my samurai who everybody laughs at. I got the cord out and put the 4WD in and pulled - well, the rope broke... bugger! I really wanted to be the hero of the hour who pulled henri out of the mud. instead we all joined forces and lifted his car out of the ditch. yes - lifted, by hand.
and after that the adventure was over; what was left was lunch in ruhengeri and a 2 hour drive home along the winding roads of rwanda's country side. beautiful!
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