The last of my items to tick off in Africa and probably my favourite activity of my whole holiday. After a warm up with a trek into the forest to see Chimpanzees the previous day and then a night spent on the beautiful banks of Lake Bunyonyi, we got up early to trek into the forest to see the mountain gorillas.
After getting dressed in our extremely fetching trekking gear (mine may have been too sexy), we left extremely early to drive for an hour over bumpy roads and with a short stop for sunrise and photos over the valley and of the mountains we would be climbing.
After a briefing about safety and tracking and we were told the trekking takes between 2 o 6 hours, our G Adventures tour group was split into 2 as a maximum of 8 are allowed to view each gorilla group. There were 10 different gorilla groups that had been acclimatised to humans with numbers of each family having about 10 - 20 members. Our group had 11 members with 2 silver backs, 1 baby, 1 juvenile, a few black back males and a couple of females.
After a small car ride to our starting point we were introduced to our trackers and guides who would help us cut a path through the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to the gorillas and communicate with the other guides who had already left to find the gorillas.
After about 90 minutes of trekking through dense forest, over and under branches and over a stream with a few stumbles and slips on the slippery undergrowth, dirt and holding unstable branches, we arrived to our other trackers. We then proceeded quietly for another 2 minutes through thick branches that had to be cut away with the guides machetes and saw our first mountain gorillas, a black back chewing on some of the branches.
Seemingly unaware and uncaring of our presence it continue to eat and scratch as we watched and snapped away on our cameras. After about 10 minutes we moved away from this gorilla and went in search of the other members of the family. However after going around the black back, he decided he wanted to join us and began walking across our path which caused us to stop and wait.
We also got to see the baby who was approximately 8 weeks old, climbing over and around his mother and father, a medium sized silver back gorilla. We also saw the big silverback gorillas in the distance but he moved away and we didn't see him again.
We also saw a couple of other black gorillas moving through the forest eating and crashing around including one who decided to move from some side of our group causing one of the girls trying to have a photo with him in the background to move very quickly to get out of his way and avoid the gorilla known to kick tourists who get in his way.
After a full hour with the gorillas our trackers and guides informed us we would have to leave and head back much to our disappointment and it required a big effort for us to tear ourselves away from these magnificent animals.
It was a privilege to see our closest animal relatives so close (less than 2m away at some points) in their natural habitat. It was an awe inspiring experience and well worth the sometimes tricky trek and early morning to see this gentle yet powerful animals. Worth every penny of the trip and my favourite experience of the whole tour.
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