visiting the gorillas

[Ken Gargett]

wondering if anyone else has done this?

saw a good article on it in the new york times (copied in below) and it brought back memories of when i did it (i was going to say 20 years but time does fly) 30 years ago. one of the most amazing days of my life.

quite a few differences then. i think it cost about $40 not $750. they took us in, in groups of 6, not 8 and only one group per day. there were other places doing it as well but certainly nowhere near the 80 allowed today. on one hand, you'd prefer less intrusion into the gorillas' lives but on the other, this income is hat will probably save them a s a species.

in those days, we trekked in all afternoon, led by a couple of guides - always armed. the story was it was in case a gorilla went nuts and also for any poachers we might encounter. on the way out, we came across a group of soldiers who had caught a couple of poachers. they had tied them to stakes, much like one might tie a beef carcass to a stake for a bbq, and were carrying them out. long stints in jail awaited them.

anyway, after the trek in, we stayed at wooden huts overnight. then next morning, and we were lucky as we had a glorious day, the guides track in to where they saw the gorillas last (sometimes the day before, sometimes several days). then they follow the tracks to where they now are, if they can - not that difficult. gorillas don't do stealth.

the theory even then was an hour max and stay 8-10 yards away at least. when we first encountered them, they were largely hidden in the forest and the silverback did the chest thumping and a charge. we had been told just go flat and not look. of course, easier said. so we were all there flat on the ground with our heads craned around to see them.

they were fantastic. never had a better day. we spent over three hours with them. the big ones do bugger all but eat and fart. all day. the little ones play like human kids.

there was a young, almost fully grown silverback called rafiki (means friend in swahili). he was sitting on a log eating (they just rip down small trees and branches etc and eat the bark and leaves etc etc).

i gave my camera to one of my mates and told him i was going to edge backwards very slowly to the other end of the log so with the wide angle, he could get a photo of me and the gorilla. so that is what i did. edged back ever so slowly. never looking at the gorilla (apparently a bit of a challenge to them if you do). sat on the end of the log.

then i hear enormous crashing and rafiki has rolled up and sits down next to me. and i mean right next to me. i freeze. rafiki decides to investigate me. rubs his hand all over my head (you could feel the power - he could have popped my skull like a grape). pokes about the water bottle on my belt. has a big sniff. odd thing was that i had absolutely no fear (i would have thought i would have been terrified) as i don't think he had the slightest intent to hurt me. was just curious. sat next to me for several minutes. then he rolled back into the jungle, head literally over heels, and disappeared.

my mates are all frozen still. all i can say is did you get the shot?

my mate says he has no idea. he thinks he might have but he just froze and doesn't know.

being pre-digital days, i had to wait six months to develop the film and find out. turns out he did. there is a photo of rafiki with its hand a few inches above my head.

a few years later, the visits had to stop because of the war in rwanda (such a tragic thing). we'd heard quite a few gorillas had been killed by poachers and soldiers. the first groups to go back in to search for gorillas went in about ten years after my visit.

i was watching a doco on it and the first family of gorillas they found was in the virungas - the silverback was familiar to them. rafiki!

i think i sobbed like a little kid.

i would strongly recommend that anyone with any interest in this world put this at the very top of their bucketlist. it is the most amazing thing you can do.

Trekking With the Gorillas of Rwanda

OCT. 23, 2015

A juvenile female gorilla of the Hirwa family in Rwanda. Credit Martina Bacigalupo for The New York Times

By KEVIN SACK

If there is a safari that brings you any closer, on foot, to wild beasts capable of mauling you, I’m not sure I care to be on it.

One second you are bushwhacking through thickets of bamboo in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, pulling yourself up a steep lava slope, toehold to toehold. The next, you turn a corner and sunlight streams through the canopy to illuminate a matted clump of black against a curtain of rain forest green. You’ve known this was coming and still you gasp. Seated perhaps 30 feet away is one of the roughly 900 mountain gorillas remaining on earth, a saggy-breasted female, and soon you see that she is cradling an infant in her lap. She wraps one arm around the 6-month-old while scratching her own ear with an extended index finger.

A juvenile female gorilla of the Hirwa family in Rwanda. Credit Martina Bacigalupo for The New York Times

She is the advanced sentry for the Hirwa family, a clan of 20, and to the extent that she seems to care at all about our arrival, her attitude smacks of “What took you so long?” We freeze, then tiptoe forward to give all eight trekkers in our group a clear sightline. Cameras are unholstered faster than six-shooters at a gunfight.

Soon two siblings tumble out of the brush, abruptly disrupting the maternal one-on-one time. As the imps wrestle and roll, the mother flops on her back in surrender.

Any anthropomorphism must be forgiven; it is impossible not to be struck by the humanoid nature of these neighbors on the evolutionary chain. While observing so much of African wildlife — warthogs, elephants, giraffes — one marvels at their prehistoric form and questions our placement in the same biological class. With the mountain gorillas of Rwanda, which share 98 percent of our DNA, we are looking into a mirror, and they are looking impassively back.

At the time of my trip in mid-August, the Hirwa family consisted of a dominant male — the enormous silverback, Munyinya — as well as one younger male (known as a blackback), six females, five juveniles from 3.5 to 6 years old, and six infants, including a week-old baby. It is one of 10 families that have been habituated to near-daily contact with people on the Rwandan side of the Virunga Massif, a range of saw-toothed volcanic peaks along the shared borders of Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Thirty-five years ago, the Virunga population had been thinned by poaching, disease and habitat loss to an extremely endangered 250. Conservation efforts have brought the count gradually back to 480, with about 300 of those on the mountainsides of Volcanoes National Park. There were 31 births there from June 2014 to August 2015 (after a gestation, not surprisingly, of about nine months).

Human access to the 62-square-mile park is severely restricted, with only 80 visitors permitted to take one of the guided gorilla treks each day. Groups of up to eight are allowed to spend one tightly monitored hour with one of the 10 families.

The cost of a permit for foreign visitors has increased to $750 from $250 a decade ago. Nonetheless, the number of gorilla visitors to the park has almost tripled since 2004, exceeding 20,000 in 2014, and they have become central to this country’s ambitions to build a high-end tourism industry as it recovers from the unimaginable genocide of 1994.

The park’s trackers, armed with radios and just-in-case rifles, maintain a daylong vigil on the gorilla families, making it rare that guides do not find them. When it happens — perhaps 10 times a year — trekkers are offered a chance to try again the next day.

In more than 30 years, the guides have never had to shoot a gorilla and no visitor has ever been harmed in an incident involving one, said Prosper Uwengeli, the park’s chief warden. “I mean,” he added, “no incident apart from friendly kicks or slaps.” (I had met someone on the receiving end of one of those kicks and she described it more as a friendly stomp.)

Two infant gorillas playing in the trees. Credit Martina Bacigalupo for The New York Times

The trekkers gather at 7 a.m. at the park headquarters to be grouped according to the difficulty of their hikes. My hourlong walk, considered moderately strenuous, took us across a sloped field of Irish potatoes in lavender bloom and then up a steep vertical through the forest. There was no trail. On more challenging hikes, it can take more than three hours to reach the gorillas.

At an elevation of about 8,500 feet, the air is noticeably thin and this 55-year-old lowlander, whose relationship with exercise grows more theoretical each year, found himself grateful for the guide’s regular rests. On one of those breaks, a fellow hiker — intending only kindness, I’m sure — let me know that she had an inhaler.

Our group ranged from a 29-year-old Italian woman to a 61-year-old Mexican man and all managed just fine, although not without perspiration. Carved walking sticks were provided to each trekker; some also accepted an occasional hand up from the blue-uniformed porters they hired for $10 to carry cameras, rain gear and water.

Our lead guide, Callixte Mugiraneza, provided a primer on gorilla family dynamics. He explained that at about 450 pounds and more than five feet tall, the 30-year-old silverback, Munyinya, exerted total control over the Hirwa family, choosing when and where they would forage for food.

He also offered basic rules of the road: Stay at least 22 feet away and keep voices low. No camera flashes. Avoid sustained eye contact or finger pointing. If a gorilla moves toward you, step calmly out of the way. If one charges, follow the guide’s instruction to drop to the ground in submission. Don’t freak out if the silverback beats his leathery chest. He’s just showing off, or perhaps warming himself.

Mr. Mugiraneza then demonstrated a few of the 16 oral prompts that guides have mastered to communicate with the apes. “Mmmmmm,” he growled. “Mah-mmmmm.” Translated roughly, he said, this meant “good morning.” I wondered if there might also be a prompt that, translated roughly, meant “stop stomping him.”

We found Munyinya in a shaded alcove not far from the first group, sitting upright with his legs crossed and his great furry mitts draped over his knees. His size and the sweeping crown of his head distinguished him from the others. Surveying his domain, first left and then right, he could not have looked more imperial. As two youngsters tussled at his feet, he nudged one away so he could groom the other with long, nimble fingers.

Throughout our hour with the apes, the enduring wonder was just how close we could get. Our telephoto lenses poked through branches to find the new mother suckling her infant. A juvenile twirled its way down a bamboo stalk and scampered past my pant leg, near enough to high-five. A large female, perched just above us in low-hanging branches, methodically stripped bamboo stems as if she was shucking corn.

Park guides and trekkers indicating that an interaction with gorillas is imminent. Credit Martina Bacigalupo for The New York Times

The other wonder was the blind faith we placed in our guides, based on little more than a generalized understanding that everyone lives to post their gorilla selfies on Facebook. If that sanitizes the experience a tad, so be it. It is also what allows such remarkable proximity in a natural habitat.

Conservation in the park has become a national priority. Visitors must buy separate permits not only to see the gorillas but also to hike the volcanoes or explore caves. Much of the revenue is dedicated to fighting poaching. Rangers find 100 traps on average in the park each month. The intended prey are usually antelope and buffalo, but gorillas find their way into the snares about 10 times a year, Mr. Uwengeli, the park’s warden, said.

Despite their cost, permits can be scarce. Some people trek on consecutive days in order to observe different families. So long as the visitors keep coming, and the Rwandans hold fast to their duty as stewards, the gorillas should continue to thrive in a rare ecological balance that benefits both communities.

IF YOU GO

Start your research on the Rwanda Development Board’s website (rwandatourism.com/things-to-do/gorilla-tracking) or this independent site about Volcanoes National Park (volcanoesnationalparkrwanda.com).

There are a variety of tour operators. I enjoyed two days in the charge of Kassim Ndayambaje of Hills in the Mist Tours (hillsinthemisttours.com), whose $1,450 package included a trekking permit, round-trip transportation from Rwanda’s teeming capital, Kigali, and a one-night stay in the park’s gateway town, Ruhengeri (also called Musanze).

Other tour operators recommended by park officials and guides include Volcanoes Safaris (volcanoessafaris.com) and Primate Safaris (primatesafaris.info).

The fee for my room at the spartan Hotel Muhabura (muhaburahotel.com), mosquito netting included, was $40. Add $50 for the room where the gorilla researcher Dian Fossey stayed while on forays into town from her camp in the park.

Dawn over Buranga Mountain. Credit Martina Bacigalupo for The New York Times

A moderately priced option, with rates that range from $230 to $450, including full board, is Mountain Gorilla View Lodge (3bhotels.com/our-properties/mountain-gorilla-view-lodge).

More upscale accommodations can be found at Virunga Lodge, operated by Volcanoes Safaris, where high-season rates begin at $700 a person a night, including meals, unlimited drinks and a massage (volcanoessafaris.com/lodges) and at Sabinyo Silverback Lodge, where rates in multiple-occupancy rooms range from $450 to $840 a person, depending on season (governorscamp.com/property-descriptions/silverback-lodge-parc-national-des-volcans-rwanda).

How Extreme?

Remoteness: 3

Expect to spend at least 20 hours traveling to Kigali from anywhere in the United States. Once you’re there, it’s a two- to three-hour drive on good roads to Volcanoes National Park. Many adventurers combine the trip with visits to preserves in Kenya or Tanzania.

Creature discomforts: 2

Unless you stay at a high-end lodge, do not expect to find fine dining in Ruhengeri (Musanze). Bring a sandwich. Maybe two.

Physical difficulty: 3

Gorilla trekking at high altitude without trails can be taxing. Give rangers an honest assessment of your stamina so they can group you appropriately. Not recommended for those with heart, breathing or other limiting medical conditions. Bring sturdy hiking boots, a cap, a long-sleeve shirt and gloves to protect against stinging nettles.

[Ken Gargett]

there were quite a few terrific photos with this article. not sure why they didn't transfer.

Edited October 25, 2015 by Fuzz
Fixed it for you, Ken

[JY0]

Ken, can you post your picture? What am amazing experience.

[oliverdst]

Your post is much better than the article.

Do you still have your pictures?

[Ken Gargett]

guys, i do have pics somewhere but way before digital. i'll try and dig a few out and if rob can scan them, we might be able to load them. nut they are a bit old.

[PapaDisco]

guys, i do have pics somewhere but way before digital. i'll try and dig a few out and if rob can scan them, we might be able to load them. nut they are a bit old.

Um . . . you're counting on Rob to scan them?

[Smallclub]

I must go, I need one hand to make a nice ashtray

should look nice near my elephant stool

[IPORTER]

Incredible story Ken. Would be a real bonus if you can get your pics up!

[MostlyHarmless]

Thanks for this story, can't you just take a picture of that picture and post it here? No need to scan it.

[Ken Gargett]

Thanks for this story, can't you just take a picture of that picture and post it here? No need to scan it.

good thought.

[PointFivePast]

Added to my bucket list. Fantastic story Ken, you're quite a lucky fellow.