Gorilla tracking day! Very excited. See videos on our Facebook page I had set the alarm for 6.30 a.m. but fighting cats woke me up at around 6 so I got up and got ready to go se gorillas. After breakfast I collected a big bottle of water and the packed lunch, which the restaurant at the campsite had prepared for me, and set off to register for the trek. There were three gorilla family/groups in this area, which were habituated but still very much wild. Each family can be visited by a group of no more than 8 humans at a time and we were all put into those groups and assigned a gorilla family each. As luck would have it, I had drawn the short straw and was in the group, which had to climb the highest and travel the farthest. At least they gave me a walking stick to help. At the briefing we were reminded what we were allowed to do/not do and were given the option of hiring a porter for the day. Everyone except me hired a porter who would carry their day bag, water etc., fan them when they got too hot and push and pull them when the going got tough. Rita, our guide told us that a couple of days prior to our trek an extremely large tourist had hired 12 porters to carry her all the way up the mountain to see the gorillas and carry her all the way back down! Incredible. We set off at about 8.30 and after stopping for a rest every five minutes (because four of our group were so unfit) we eventually had word from the trackers that they had located the gorillas. So it took us nearly 3 hours to climb the mountain, which should’ve taken just over an hour. Anyway, all the frustration was forgotten when we clapped eyes on the beasts. It was magical to see three little babies playing and messing around in the forest. There were 11 gorillas in this family (the Mubare group) ruled by a 21 year-old silverback called Kanyonyi. We saw him, a female called Malaika and her yet to be named 5 month old baby who was the cutest bundle of fluff plus two other slightly older babies who Malaika was looking after while their mums did whatever gorilla mums do at midday. We spent an hour ooh-ing and aaah-ing and took a zillion photos. It was really difficult to take goo photos as they moved about so much and because the forest was so thick it was fairly dark and when you did come into a clearing the sunlight was blinding. We were all just happy watching the babies play. We left the trackers with the gorillas. They would stay there till the gorillas settled down for the night before coming down the mountain. The trackers would set off early next morning to the place where they had left the gorillas sleeping the previous night. Of course the gorillas would’ve moved on first thing so the trackers would then track them for the next group of paying customers. We had to leave everything except our cameras behind with the porters who were about 10 minutes walk away. We were not allowed to carry anything, not even water, with us to near the gorillas. So we collected our belongings and set off. We had about 600M to climb down the 1900M high mountain. We stopped to eat lunch when we were a safe distance away from the gorillas. Safe to eat without endangering their health I mean. I myself felt very safe even when I was only about 8 feet or so away from the silverback. He was very calm indeed. He was so big and powerful I imagine he could snap me like a twig if he wanted to. Our guide Rita and chief tracker Alex made us feel at ease and looked after us really well. I feel very lucky to have done this. There were only 880 mountain gorillas in the wild in the world at the last count in 2011. Over half of them were here in Uganda at the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park. I was told 20% of the money I paid to go see the gorillas went to the community in Buhoma and the rest was spent on wildlife conservation throughout Uganda. I hope so. By the time I got back to camp it was too late to leave so we stayed another night at Buhoma.

0 km covered / 0 hours riding