Gorillaz!

On Thursday morning Heidi and I got up at 3:30, stumbled around in the dark for a bit, and were miraculously ready to go at 4am when our driver came to pick us up for the trip to Ruhengeri. Luckily it’s about a two and a half hour drive, which gave us a little extra time to sleep on the way. Our driver, Eric (a lot of Rwandans here have either been given or have adopted Western names) was a really nice guy and a big fan of both the Eagles and mid-nineties boy bands. Quite the soundtrack for an early morning drive!

The route to Ruhengeri is stunning. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such beautiful scenery in my life – it may even be on par with (gasp) Croatia! If I had been more awake I would have taken a ton of pictures (and yet I still ended up with over 200 by the end of the day. Good lord). It’s amazing how many people are out between 4 and 6am, already working. We passed probably hundreds of people on the road, many of them carrying impossibly heavy loads on their heads – even some of the little kids were carrying huge bags over their shoulders!

When we arrived in Ruhengeri we stopped off to sign in and find a group to join for the trek. While at the base camp we ran into Jesse, a med student Marianna and I met the day before at ORTPN who is going to be getting his MPH in my department next year! I love those small world moments :) Heidi & I wanted to see the Susa group, since it’s the biggest gorilla family and is the farthest hike. The hike itself is beautiful – about 2 hours up one of the mountains in the Parc National des Volcans (part of the Virunga Volcano Region, a larger park shared by Rwanda, Uganda and the Congo), then another hour or so through the rainforest. (The hike is different every time – there are trackers that go into the jungle every morning and follow the gorillas, then radio the guides to tell them where to go.) We’re talking some serious jungle trekking here – the guy in front kept having to hack away at stuff with a machete, just so we could get through! In some places the vines are so thick and tangled that you end up walking on top of them, several inches above the ground, instead of on the ground itself.

There are only about 700 mountain gorillas left in the world, and they all live in the wild. I couldn’t get over how close we were to them, and how human they are! I could watch them for hours. They didn’t seem to mind us being there – I swear one of them was actually posing for us! One of the highlights was seeing the twins, Byishimo and Impano, who are almost two years old. Apparently they are inseparable. When we found them they were snuggled peacefully, their mom just a few feet away. But soon they got into a sibling tiff, which started when one twin, without warning, smacked the other on the head. (Did I mention they seemed human?) Tussling ensued, with some tumbling and biting thrown in for good measure.

This trek was truly a once in a lifetime experience. Mountain gorillas are, for the most part, incredibly gentle. They mostly just eat, nap, play, groom each other, and chill out – I couldn’t help thinking, while watching them, that they represent the best side of human nature. (We do share 97% of the same DNA!) Maybe we could all learn a few things from them…