I have waited 16 years to do this part of my African trip and I am afraid that I am building things up too much, enough to maybe make it disappointing.  I hope not.

But before that we had to get from Queen Elizabeth National Park to Lake Bunyonyi which was to be the pick-up point for the Trek.  Earlier Elton had informed us of a "short cut" that would save at least 2 hours driving.  He also told us that they were currently trying to asphalt this road and that we will encounter roadworks that we will have to dodge.  He didn't tell us that we would get bogged in the process !!  We were very lucky that in the section that we got stuck an Excavator and a Grader were working.  The Grader especially came in handy and basically pushed the Truck over about 1 km to get us through the bad section.  Like I said, we were lucky.  The other 13 trucks that were bogged weren't so.  At the end of the day it didn't waste to much time and only added to the excitement that was building.

The Gorilla Trek started early, 4 am to be precise.  It didn't really matter what time it started as both Audrey and I didn't sleep a lot in anticipation.  The drive felt long (and bumpy) and thank god it was dark as the road we took was cut into a cliff.  I am not the greatest passenger, Audrey is even worse, so it was a matter of closing my eyes and just hoping we got through.  Alas, we did and arrived an hour early to the Trekking point.  The trekking starts at 8H30 on the dot.  It you are late, bad luck, permit forfeited so getting there early wasn't really a problem.  Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park (from now on referred to as BIFNP) has about 370 of the last remaining 800 or so Mountain Gorilla's.  Out of this there is about 30 different groups of Gorilla's of which there are only 9 that people are allowed to trek to and watch for no more than 1 hour.  Our group was called "Barry" and up until 2 weeks ago, consisted of 1 Silver-back, 2 Mothers, 3 teenage Males and 4 juveniles.  2 weeks ago one of the Mother gave birth.  All along this trip so far, we have seen baby everything's so to add to the list a baby Gorilla was, well, awesome.  We were told that we should expect a trek of about 1H30 - 2H00 based on the previous days locations and honestly after all the non-walking days that we have had on the Safari so far (I reckon 49 out of 50 days have been non-walking) I was seriously looking forward to a long march.  The Forest is very thick, hence the name impenetrable, but luckily for us there are many tracks that animals have created over the years.  All we did was follow one until we found the location where we needed to create our own paths.  Once again this is not true as the new paths we were following were actually created by the Gorilla family moving from yesterdays location to their current one.  It was still tough though and really did feel like we were 'bush-bashing' our way towards the Group.  One thing that we were told is that everyday before the Tourists leave on their trips, scouts head off first to actually locate the Group.  These guys are the ones that become the go between between the tourists and Gorillas.  Over the years these scouts build up a re-pore with each group and the Gorilla's allows them into their inner sanctum.  The scouts are very important to the interactions with Gorilla's.  When we caught up to them after about 2H15 walking we knew that we were only about 50 m from Mountain Gorilla's.  To be honest I almost froze, I couldn't help thinking about what happened 16 years ago and what I've done since then.  I couldn't help thinking about the people who's lives were cruelly cut down too early.  My emotions were running very high, higher then they have for along time (Audrey knows how to keep me calm).  Anyway the show must go on and on we went.

The first Gorilla's we saw were the Silver-back (the boss of the group) and the Mother and 2 week old child.  They were just the other side of a small ravine, about 10 m away, just laying on the ground.  The Silver-back seemed to be eating constantly, mainly the leaves of the nearby trees, while the Mother was just making sure that the little one was comfortable and sleeping well.  And that's about it ...  As we were watching, the trees around us were all moving.  The Trackers said that all that was was the other Gorilla's feeding but because the jungle was so thick we just couldn't see them.  One of the Scout grabbed his machete and started to hack his way towards one of the Gorilla's, an almost adult male, and when he found him, invited Audrey, myself and Barnaby (an English/Australian guy who is a marine conservationist) to have a look.  When we got there, he was on the other-side of a brook and almost invisible (see attached photo's).  The scout started to clear the jungle using said machete and when he cleared all that he could, the bloody Gorilla did the rest!!  I'm serious here, when the Scout couldn't reach anymore, the Gorilla crawled over and grabbed the remaining branches that were blocking our view (and obviously his).  It was unbelievable and I would love to think that he did it on purpose.  What we had now was an uninterrupted view of the big fella.  Audrey and I took the obligatory selfies, everyone else arrived (it became crowded) and it was truly amazing.  You must always remember that these are wild animals, yes they have had human interaction before, but they hunt and scavenge and procreate and poo on their own.  Out of the family of 11 we ended up seeing 7 of them.  The truly sad bit is that even though we only saw 7 Gorilla's that equates to 1% of the total wild population left on Earth.  It is a sad state and with the constant pressure being put onto their habitat by over-population and still the presence of poaching, I don't think that we will have wild Highland Gorilla's in the near future.

Our hour went by too quick and we were forced to head back.  My build up to this, as said earlier, was massive, but it really is worth it and I encourage anyone who wants to do this trip to do it, sooner rather that later.  You will not regret it.  I definitely didn't.