Up Close And Personal — Gorillas National Park

Gorillas. The largest primates on earth. Massive creatures found in the jungles of Africa and world renowned for their size, power, and personal expressions similar to our own. They have been brought to life through documentaries and movies we may love. And now Gorillas are one of our planet’s most endearing mammals made accessible thanks to zoos and eco-tourism.
With this in mind we opted to book an excursion to see them in the wild. While seeing Gorilla in Uganda is absolutely NOT a budget-friendly activity, the price of admission is currently half price to booster sales during an otherwise tourist-less year. I guess this is one good thing to come out of this awful COVID-19 pandemic. Typically the price to see Gorillas is 800USD PER PERSON, meaning we would have spent $1,600 during any other year!! (I’m not sure we could have justified that much money for a one hour long activity. To put that in perspective, we could spend an entire month birding around Colombia for the same price as one hour with Gorillas!) But being half off, aka $400 each, we opted to bite the bullet and book a last minute visit to Mgahinga Gorilla National Park. We were secretly hoping that no other tourists would be present during our visit, but an Australian/South African couple showed up as well. They were equally disappointed to not have the Gorillas to themselves but in the end we all had an amazing experience. (Or at least I did and I hope they did too!)
Gorilla tracking has become one of the top tourist attractions in Uganda, and for good reason — the interaction is incredible. The whole activity involves a hike in, an hour with a habituated group, and a hike back. For tourism reasons, it’s become a set schedule with a set time frame looking something like this: Arrive by 0730, 0800 briefing begins, begin hike at 0830, search for Gorillas, find them, spend exactly one hour, hike back, debrief, receive congratulations certificate, and leave. The whole routine felt rehearsed and was a bit laughable at times, especially because our little session looked a bit different than most in that we didn’t have to go far at all to find the Gorillas and yet our tour guide at the end handed us certificates and congratulated us on successfully Gorilla tracking as if we had done some challenging task. Almost no hiking or tracking was involved. In fact, during our visit the Gorillas were only a 5 minute walk from the visitor’s center! I don’t mean to say all of that as a bad thing. I think for the average tourist it’s great and it worked out for us to have the Gorillas so close to the entry of the park because we already do so much hiking. I definitely can see how a big hike to find them could make the whole experience more worthwhile.

Initially when we approached the Gorillas they started walking towards us! This is a habituated group and they trusted our presence. We were told to keep a distance of 7m (21ft) away but managed to be even closer at times when they would walk towards our location.
Seeing such a large animal at such close range was a bit of a remarkable experience. Seeing hands with opposable thumbs and enough dexterity to carefully rip leaf by leaf off of a branch or break a papaya stalk in half in the exact same way I would have done it was fascinating. With my binoculars I could see the fine details like fingernails! But most surprising of all was the body odor these massive creatures were emitting. It was a scent we could detect before we were even close to them and one we could smell after walking away. While pungent, the scent was surprisingly sweet and not overly unpleasant. Gorilla B.O. — Who knew??
The group we were “tracking” had three silverback males, two adult females, two sub-adult females, and one infant a whopping 9 months old. The fact that they are habituated to humans and do not mind our presence means we could safely get extremely close. But when a Gorilla approaches you are to simply sit still and not get in their way.
At one point a large silverback, the alpha male, walked directly up to me and passed mere inches from where I had crouched down. My heart was pounding as I sat as still as possible. It’s equal parts nerve-wracking and exhilarating to see a 460lb (209kg) animal with the kind of sheer power to simply rip me into pieces walk directly towards me and trust that he will continue to walk on by. He did. The respect between us was unforgettable.
It was expensive, but I’ve never experienced anything else quite like this and 30 years from now I’ll have long forgotten about the money but the memories of being so close to Gorillas will stay with me for the rest of my life.

But before we actually saw the Gorillas in Gorillas National Park, we went birding with targets such as Rwenzori Turaco, Rwenzori Double-collared Sunbird, and one of the rarest birds in Africa, Shelley’s Crimsonwing, on the agenda.
For whatever reason, when we arrived and stated we wanted to go bird watching we were given FOUR RANGERS to our three person group and thus had a full 7-person entourage as we attempted to look for skulky birds such as Kiuvu Thrush and the crimsonwing. I personally found it to be a bit excessive. Surely one armed ranger would have sufficed. The birding in the forest wasn’t exactly bustling with activity, but we managed to easily find our main targets. Except Shelley’s Crimsonwing of course. Very little is known about that species and until thorough surveys of the fauna of the DRC can take place it is likely to remain that way. Most sightings from Mgahinga are either brief glimpses or of juvenile birds, both of which are a bit suspect, especially considering no one knows what a juvenile looks like! I personally wouldn’t trust any recent sightings from Uganda unless there were photographs to go with it. Just saying…