King Kong in Rwanda

Like many tourists, our primary reason for visiting Rwanda was mountain gorilla trekking. You have to obtain a $500 permit months in advance, arrive at the gorilla trekking base camp by 7am the day of your trek (or you lose your permit), and then get split strictly into eight groups of eight. Some people can get permits the day of because of late people and because of a supposed large number of fat Americans who buy multi-day permits but then end up too unfit to continue trekking. You are also not allowed to visit the gorillas if you are sick because they are so humanlike that they can catch (but not recover from) our diseases. The population is estimated at around only 500 remaining gorillas...


Groups can trek anywhere from half an hour to eight hours to find their gorilla family. I picked a "medium" group and we lucked out - it only took us a little over an hour to find our 18-member family, the Amohoro. It certainly wasn't easy trekking as our guide had to machete hack a way for us through dense jungle, brush, and bush.


Sometimes you'd have to trust your weight on a recently hacked branch and hope you didn't fall. It was a bit wet and slippery too so I fell a bunch of times. One of the guides behind me kept having to pick me up - I took him down with me once, oops :) Definiely worth it though! That hour with the gorillas was probably one of the fastest hours of my life. Watching the big Silverback feed and scratch himself was quite fascinating, especially when he'd grunt away at the others. Apparently, the head Silverback (12+ years old and most dominant male) is the only one allowed to fornicate with the female members in the family. If the younger males want to, they have to go off and do it in hiding! The lead Silverback will eventually get challenged by a younger/stronger male in the family and then he will be forced to leave and eventually die alone :( The adult gorillas were definitely cool, but the 2 month and 3 month old babies in the family were my favorite!


One of them lolled around the ground a bunch, disappeared for a while, and then popped its head up behind a tree. It was like he wanted to play peek-a-boo! So adorable! The gorillas really are amazing creatures that I could watch and photograph for hours I think. It's crazy to think about how close we were able to get at some points - sometimes only a few feet away!