16 Nov Gorilla Trekking in Rwanda
It was my second day gorilla trekking in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park and I thought I knew the gig. My first hike, in the medium difficulty category, had been an easy stroll through bamboo and montane forest into an open glade where our assigned gorilla troop seemed to be lounging in a heap awaiting our arrival. A large female brushed past me at one point and a couple of young males tussled through the woods beside us as we weaved through the trees at a respectful distance behind the troop. These moments of closer proximity provided extra thrill, but simply being among these magnificent primates with their human-like behaviors was awe-inspiring in its own right. The gorillas patiently tolerated our presence as they spread across a hillside to feed, by and large going about their business as if we weren’t there.
My second hike was categorized as easy. That struck me as ironic as my feet spun uselessly on a particularly slick and steep bank of mud. I might’ve stayed there like a gerbil on its wheel had my porter not yanked me to the vegetation above. The point at which we stopped prior to joining the gorillas, which the day before had been used as an opportunity for last minute safety reminders and gear transfer, was rushed and truncated as a gorilla appeared atop an adjacent tree. He was at our eye level given the near vertical slope. Our guides hurried us past this ‘infiltrator’ to where I expected the troop to be.
I heard branches breaking all around, but the only gorilla I saw was a baby, one of the newest additions to the Volcanoes National Park gorilla population. Wide eyes gazed at us from behind a veil of leaves, then the youngster somersaulted down a vine to land at our feet. Too new to understand the park rules of gorilla-human engagement, the baby seemed enthusiastic about the arrival of a whole new group of hairless playmates. The guides shooed the youngster away as they led us up another bank for views of the silverback. The youngster clamored up the vegetative throne the silverback lay upon, rousing dad from his nap in the sun before bounding back toward us.
The silverback, one of the three largest gorillas in the park according to our guides, turned toward us just as the baby slipped past our human line. In an instant, the silverback rolled from his day bed and closed the too small gap between us. He stopped within a foot of us, looming plenty large on all fours as he grunted what could only be interpreted as an aggressive challenge. We cowered in a submissive crouch, those feeling the warmth of the gorilla’s breath on their cheeks stared at the ground, and we all hoped the guide’s placating grunts were being correctly interpreted. I felt my pulse increase as sounds of a gorilla feeding in the bush above me grew closer, the baby swung from branches beside me, the silverback held its ground, and various guides rumbled instruction both in English and gorilla. Fortunately, their gorilla intonations were sufficiently accurate. The silverback flopped to its back and gazed at the sky, enabling the guides to extract our group so that mom could extract her baby.
Unfortunately, our dramatic entrance made for a dramatic visit. Our hour encounter vacillated between the gorillas escaping to far or inaccessible areas, turning their backs on us and hiding behind vegetation in a seeming protest to our invasion, and us wedging ourselves into viewing vantages so close that one time the mother shoved one of our group members out of the way in her attempt to escape. The silverback ultimately announced the end of our visit by raising to his hind legs, running bipedally for several yards as he pounded his chest like King Kong and roared one last warning. With that, he gathered his troop and disappeared into yet another patch of impossible vegetation.
There were, of course, a variety of factors that created the differences between my two treks. With wildlife though, it generally boils down to behavior – of both the wildlife and the human observers. It’s an intricate dance. The day we gave the gorillas space, they calmly approached us. The day we pressed too close, the gorillas issued adrenaline-inducing warnings and then were gone. It’s telling that my best photographs came from the first hike.
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