Glamorous Only in Retrospect: 1 April - Gorillas in the Mist!!!

1 April

Bwindi National Park

Steph:

Oh my goodness. Today was amazing. We had to get up really early to catch a ride up the mountain to the national park. It was breathtaking. The mountains were covered in mist and we drove alongside the cliffs for a good hour. At one point the road was blocked by a tree and our driver, Mike, grabs a machete, gets out and hacks the crap out of that tree. A few more men went to help and within 5 minutes, the road was clear. It was incredible. A whole tree out of the way in 5 minutes.

So here's how it works. There are currently two gorilla families that have been acclimated to humans. They are allowed 8 visitors per day for exactly one hour. You begin the day treking up the mountain chasing them around. Sometimes it takes groups 6 hours to find the gorillas, other times they're super close to camp and it only takes 30 minutes. Once we get to the gorillas, we have an hour to hang out with them and take pictures. The rule is that we can't get closer than 7M to them, but the gorillas don't know that so the chance of us getting closer is pretty good.

We walked around for exactly 20 minutes before our guide told us we could get off the dirt road and go into the jungle. Literally through the jungle. It was awesome. And there they were! This family has 12 members and three of them are silver backs. There was one little baby and a few 5 yr olds.

The hour went by much too quickly but it was great and we were all extremely excited.

Enjoy the pics :)