Rwanda 2010 – Day 4

“The gorillas are the reward, and one should never ask for more than their trust.” --Dian Fossey

At 4:58 am, the coffee arrived, waking me up with a start. We cleaned up, dressed, and headed up to breakfast at 5:30. Fresh fruit, toast, and oatmeal awaited us, of which the toast was the highlight. Some of the fruit was strange (fruit tomatoes, anyone?), and the oatmeal was way too creamy and sketchy. Before we left breakfast the staff brought in box lunches for us to take with us. Since we weren't sure whether the treks would last 20 minutes or 4 hours, they wanted to make sure we had a lunch with us no matter how long we were hiking. We were all supposed to meet at the car by 6 am for the 45 minute drive to Park HQ. Sage and I were there at 6; but the other 3 that we were still driving with were 15 minutes late! I was ready to kill them, especially if we missed our trek, but it turned out there was no need to worry, even though we were the last people to arrive.

The Volcanoes National Park Headquarters is outside Kinigi, and this is the mustering spot for all hikes into the park on any given day. Whether you’re doing a gorilla trek, hiking to Dian Fossey’s grave, hiking to the top of the Bisoke Volcano, or doing the endangered Golden Monkey hike, everyone was required to report to the Park HQ at 7 am. While all the people there milled about, enjoying a complimentary cup of tea, the Park Rangers were gathered in a circle, apparently to get their assignments for the day. After that, a very interesting thing happens. All the guides or drivers that brought all the trekkers to the park gathered around one of the rangers, and it was apparent that dealing and negotiating for groups began. We were told beforehand that there are 8 tourist groups of gorillas, and each group is assigned a maximum of 8 tourists who can trek to that group on the given day. The guides and rangers assign the groups, however, based on apparent physical abilities, age, and any other feedback from the guides. Since we were stuck with the other 3 members of our group, we pretty much knew that we would go on a hike with those 3, since it would be a lot easier on our driver if we all were together. And since Mort and Judy looked to be pushing 60, we had a feeling we’d be doing a pretty easy trek this day.

Once Francis finished up with the other drivers and guides, he came over and told us we would be going to the Hirwa Group. (Hirwa means “lucky” in Kinyarwandan.) We met our ranger/guide for the day, Mr. Augustin, as well as the others who would be on our trek – in this case it was a couple from Germany (so there were only 7 of us total for this trek). Augustin told us about the group; that there were 13 members, including 1 silverback, Munyinya. He told us too that there were several juveniles, and that he didn’t think the hike would be too bad – he described it as a “medium”. We would have to take a short drive to the trailhead to begin the trek (in fact, none of the hikes or treks into the park begin at the Park HQ, but require your driver to take you to the trailhead to begin), but since the trackers were still locating the gorillas today, he wasn’t sure how long the hike would actually take. Once the brief review of the group was complete, we all met back at our car with Francis and began the short drive to the trailhead.

We left Park HQ around 8 am, and the drive to the trailhead took about 40 minutes. However, it was only about 10 minutes on paved road, and then a bone-jarring 30 minutes on a rutted, bumpy dirt road. I was glad Francis had the Land Rover, and it felt like we were in one of those Land Rover commercials where the car ends up driving at a 45 degree angle. While going so slow there were plenty of young kids who would run along the car, yelling “HELLO!” at us, and some even jumped on the spare tire on the back to catch a ride. Francis would yell at them to stop, and once we stopped and he opened the car door and the kids scattered and ran. It was pretty funny, actually. We finally parked, and at the trailhead there were several porters available to us for hire. The suggested price for the porter is $10, and for that they will carry your backpack as well as assist you on the hike. This didn’t turn out to be needed on this hike, but in the subsequent days we used our porter a lot to get us up and down the mountains. Considering I was already carrying too much weight around my belly to begin with, I hired a porter (whose name was very long and started with an “E”, but that was all I could make out), as did 2 of the others. Augustin also supplied us with walking sticks, which (again) weren’t real important on this day, but turned out to be godsends on the following days. With porters and walking sticks in hand, we set off to the gorillas!

The first part of the hike was going through the fields that bordered the park boundary. Mr. Augustin said that the trackers still hadn’t found the gorillas, but they pretty much knew what direction they’d be in, so we headed off that way. (Once the trackers find the gorillas, they radio down to the rangers and tell them their position.) Our way was led by another park ranger who carried a rifle. This, we were told, was simply to ward off any buffalo or elephants that we may stumble across in the park. Both of those animals can be aggressive and dangerous, and they are required to bring armed assistance to keep us safe. (They said that they only use the guns to fire over the heads and scare the animals off. I was going to ask whether that means they only carry blanks in their guns, but I’m sure they all had live ammo.) At one point the trackers pointed out some elephant dung! This was exciting for us, although I guess we would have been more excited if we saw the actual elephant. (Or even better, seeing the elephant pooping.) We hiked through the fields for 20 minutes or so when Augustin got a call saying that the gorillas were still moving. This meant we had to walk a lot farther than they thought outside the park boundary until we were closer to where they were. At one point I had to use the restroom, but wasn’t sure what the procedure would be. I asked Augustin and he said, “Short call or long call?” I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but determined quickly that a #1 was a “short call”, and #2 was a “long call”. For a short call, he simply said find a place behind a bush and go. A long call, they’d have to dig a hole for us to use. Thankfully neither of us had the need for a long call during any hikes into the park.

After an hour or so we reached the point in the park boundary fence where we’d enter. Augustin said the gorillas were only about 20 minutes away from the boundary, so we wouldn’t have much farther to go. At the park boundary Augustin asked us all to hike in single file, and to keep our voices low. We climbed over the stone wall into the Park, and the terrain changed dramatically. It became dense, with a lot of bamboo thickets to hike through.

Sage awaits her turn to climb the park stone wall

We enter the park forest

One of the porters with a machete began to hack the way through the thick vegetation, and after 15 minutes or so we met up with the trackers. These trackers actually stay with the gorillas all day, every day. Each morning they go back to the spot where they last left them, then follow their trail to their night nests. Then they follow their trails from that morning to find them. Once they do, they radio down to the ranger who then knows where to bring the tourist groups. After the group’s 1 hour with the gorillas, the tourists leave, but the rangers stay with the gorillas until 5 pm or so, then hike out of the park. And then the next day, they do it all over again.

At this point, where we met the trackers, Augustin told us we’d have to drop our bags and walking sticks, and all we could bring with us to the gorilla group would be our cameras. Anything else could create a distraction to the gorillas, which may encourage them to come investigate what we are carrying. We were told we needed to stay at least 7 meters (about 22 feet) away from the gorillas at all times. Since the gorillas don’t know about that rule (or if they do, they often choose to ignore it), it’s up to us to keep the distance, even if they choose to approach us. Finally, he told us to keep our voices low, and to follow his instructions. With that, we walked around a thick wall of vegetation and headed to see the gorillas!

Sage, of course, made sure she was right up front, and I was right behind. Almost immediately after turning the corner, Sage turned to me with her eyes lit up and magic in her voice. “Oh my God, they’re right here!” she whispered. Sure enough, we saw 2 juvenile gorillas playing nearby. Augustin brought us all close to the juveniles to watch them play – in fact, it felt more like 7 feet instead of 7 meters! We watched these 2 juveniles wrestling and playing, and then a 3rd one came to join them. Augustin estimated that they were all between 2 and 4 years old.



After watching them for a while, Augustin asked us to move on a bit to find the rest of the group. Before we could do that, I looked over and all of a sudden one of the juveniles rushed forward and grabbed Sage’s shirt! She tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let go. Augustin walked in, made some hooting vocalizations (he spoke gorilla quite well, apparently) and the little one let go and ran away. Sage was so thrilled! She had his finger marks on her shirt, and Augustin told her, “See, you really were lucky today!” (Remember, the name of the group Hirwa means “lucky”.) We walked on for a small bit and found Munyinya, the silverback, lounging in the forest. It really is an awesome sight to see a silverback gorilla so close and to appreciate the size and strength these guys have. Augustin made some calming vocalizations whenever Munyinya looked up or looked like he might be agitated, and that always seemed to calm him down. At one point the silverback grabbed one of the juveniles and began to groom him! This was rare, as researchers have found that while silverbacks very often get groomed, they really do any grooming to other gorillas. I could tell right away that I liked this guy, and he seemed sensitive and centered.

Munyinya, the silverback of the Hirwa group, grooming a juvenile

After watching the silverback for a bit we had noticed another gorilla, which seemed to be a female, off to our left in the trees. We moved on to get a look at her, but she had her back to us and we couldn’t really see much. But after a few minutes she moved and started walking away from us…and when she did all of a sudden we realized that she had a little baby! Augustin estimated the baby at about 2 months, and he was adorable. We were amazed that he was riding on his mom’s back, as most infants don’t begin to do that until they’re closer to 6 months. This one is obviously going to be top of his class. We followed the family deeper into the forest, where the young ones ended up climbing trees and the silverback lounged and relaxed. At one point I was videotaping the mother and infant, and the silverback was kind of behind us, although more to our side than behind. Munyinya decided to stand up and began to move toward us, and Augustin asked us to slowly move away from him, to give him room to move. I was doing this when all of a sudden I felt a rough push in my back, and I went flying across the forest! I guess I wasn’t moving fast enough for Munyinya, and he wanted me out of the way! You might think that Augustin, our ranger and guide, might have been alarmed or worried at this action. You’d be wrong! Sage said that right after he grabbed her by both hands and began laughing really hard! It was at this point that I realized I had been filming the entire time!



It was quite funny, and everyone couldn’t stop talking about how lucky both Sage and I were to have a direct encounter with the gorillas. And we couldn’t agree more! Sage noticed that I had knuckle prints on the back of my shirt from where he pushed me. When Augustin saw that, he laughed hard again! When Ulrich, the man from Germany, saw it, he said, “If it was me, I’d never wash that shirt, but hang it on the wall!” (I did wash it…the print had faded by the time we had gotten home. Also, it smelled.)

After the push, Munyinya sat in the sun, watching his family. The mother and infant sat nearby, and at one point the baby started to crawl onto the silverback’s back. Munyinya didn’t seem to mind, but the mother grabbed the infant anyway…but within a minute the baby was crawling on him again! Toward the end of our 1 hour the silverback was sitting in an area that made it easy for us to pose in front of him and take photos. Augustin was very adept at getting a good shot of us, although knowing him he was probably hoping we’d get charged again.

Sage and Doug with our new friend, Munyinya

The hour went by faster than any 60 minutes of my life, and in no time we had to say our goodbyes to the gorillas and make our way back to the trackers and our bags. We thanked the trackers, who would stay with the group the rest of the day, and then made our quick hike out of the park. Since we had walked so far to find the gorillas, Augustin actually called our drivers to let them know where we were, so they moved the cars closer to us and we ended up having a shorter hike back to the car than we did to the gorillas. We got some photos with everyone, including my porter and Mr. Augustin, paid our porter (along with a tip), and went on our way. We couldn’t thank Augustin enough for our experience…he was wonderful and you could tell he just loved his job, and has a lot of fun doing it. I asked him if he ever got tired of his job, and he looked at me like I was nuts and said, “No, never.” I told him I was extremely jealous of his job as we bid him adieu. We were driving away from the park at around 11:30 am, heading back to the lodge.

We arrived back at the lodge around 12:30 pm, where we were met by staff members right as we got out of our car. They told us to take off our boots, they handed us a pair of crocs, and told us they’d clean our boots and deliver them back to the room that evening! What service. For some reason they gave me pink crocs, and that ended up being a running joke, I guess. Every time we came back from hiking they would hand me a pair of pink crocs to wear! I think the guy in charge of the boot cleaning was a Manchester United fan. We went back to our banda, took showers, and sat on the patio. The weather this afternoon was sunny and warm, and we actually both wore shorts (which turned out to be the only time we wore shorts the entire trip) while sunning on the patio. At one point while we were sitting on our patio a man came down to our banda. He introduced himself as the chef, and told us what he was planning for meals for the night. He gave us 2 options of soup, 2 options of entrée, and then the dessert. We found out later that if we didn’t want either entrée (for example, later in the week some vegetarians showed up), he would be happy to make something different depending on what you wanted. What service!

In mid-afternoon we decided to take a walk up to the lounge area of the lodge, and I decided to wear my Arsenal jersey. (Yes, I brought my Arsenal jersey with me. Sage thought it was a waste of space, but I said, “Just you wait, this will be the best conversation starter we’ll have there!”) Grison, who seemed to be the main person in charge at the lodge, saw me and said, “Nice jersey!” He told me he was an Arsenal supporter, and out of the 20 people working at the lodge, 15 are Arsenal fans. Get in! We had a couple drinks on the main patio while viewing the volcanoes, and then spoke to Kevin and Debbie (the Australian couple) about their day and the trek they went on. They told us their luggage finally showed up, but the Newton couple’s didn’t yet! We mentioned to them about my “close encounter”, and they were wide-eyed and amazed. Sure enough, when a new couple showed up in the lounge, Kevin had to immediately say to them, “Doug got pushed by the silverback today!” I was sure by the end of the night the story would become, “Doug got picked up by the gorillas and thrown into a tree!”

The one thing Kevin didn’t like was my Arsenal jersey, as he turned out to be a Manchester United fan. The trash talk was going hot and heavy right up until 4:30, when we were brought up to a grassy hilltop right next to the lodge for the day’s entertainment. The lodge, which supports the local village and school, invited some of the school children to come up and perform a traditional Intore dance for the guests. The music and singing was great, the dancing impressive, and while it lasted 45 minutes, it was quite enjoyable. It also started to get quite cold at that time, and after the dancing we went back to the main lodge to warm up by the fireplace.

Local Intore dancers, putting on a show

We got drinks, shared more stories, and discovered that no one new had checked in that day, so it was the same group as the previous night (except for the 2 couples who had checked out). Joy, an older woman who was there by herself, told us about her day, in which she hiked to the top of Mt. Visoke volcano. She said it was just her and one young guy, and the going was VERY tough. They were worried at one point that they would have to turn back before they made it to the top, but I guess they powered through and finished the entire hike. But she was aching bad, and we were glad that we hadn’t scheduled that hike for the week. We also heard from poor Karen and Terry from Newton who were still wearing the same clothes they had been for 2 days, and unfortunately for them they were going to have to trek the next day in the only clothes they had (again), including jeans. Ouch.

We moved to the dining room for dinner at 7, and while most of the night’s conversation was interesting (although maybe not for Sage, as Kevin and I talked a lot about soccer and rugby), it devolved into a gun control discussion between the Aussies and the Americans. It was pretty boring, although it was interesting to hear the Australian perspective on guns. We bid Kevin and Debbie safe travels, as they were leaving for South Africa in the morning, we went back to our room by 9 pm, and were in bed soon thereafter. Unfortunately for me, I woke up at 11 with some bad stomach problems. It definitely wasn’t Traveler’s Diarrhea, but I felt very bloated and gassy, and it kept me up for much of the night. The news got even worse when Sage woke up after midnight with the same issues! On top of that, our mysterious creature friend on the roof was back, and it sounded like he was clawing and scratching his way through the ceiling. I was certain he was attempting to get into the room for the sole purpose of ripping my lungs out, whatever it was. Needless to say, it was a long night.