The gorilla trek lasted three days; one day to get there from Kampala, one day to do the actual trek, and one day to get back. The drives back and forth lasted around 9-10 hours. Passing through a lot of nature and small towns and settlements, the drive was quite uneventful. We did stop a place where we had fresh pineapples. Fresh as in “harvested a couple of hours ago”. That experience has forever ruined any pineapple for me in the future. Very fresh, sweet and juicy as I have never had one before.
The hotel we stayed at had a 1st assistant manager by the name Friday Fred who serviced us (who looked a little like a small young version of Don Cheadle). I’m not kidding – we even asked him, and that is his real name. He was apparently born on Good Friday, hence the name.
The trek day started early, as we were supposed to show up at a briefing at the gates to Bwindi Inprenetable Forest National Park at 0800, and it required almost two hours of rough driving. After a short briefing we were away, and walking for less than an hour later our guide was contacted by the two trackers who had left earlier that they had made contact with the gorillas, and that they were just waiting for us to show up. An hour later walking though some rough terrain we finally arrived. We met a family of 19 individuals; 3 silverbacks, 1 blackback and otherwise covering all ages. It was a beautiful sight, but unfortunately we only had one hour with them before we had to leave. We were lucky that they were out in the open so they were easier to see, but the foliage was still so tall that the largest silverback could take a few steps and completely disappear from view.
Getting back to the gate was actually surprisingly tough; going upwards wasn’t much different from climbing Kili, but now it was hot and humid. And you had to wear long pants so that you wouldn’t get bitten by ants. But we got back and got our diplomas (!), got back to the hotel and had a much needed bath.
Travelling back to Kampala was just as uneventful, but that changed when we reached the city. It had been raining heavily for some time, and as the city doesn’t have much of a drainage system, water was literally flowing everywhere. We were completely stuck in one place almost half an hour due to the traffic getting jammed, and it took us 1½ hours to travel the same distance which took a couple of minutes going out. Fun.
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