December 12th: Gorillas

We are here and having a marvelous time! It feels as though we've been here for a week, but today is only our 4th day! We've seen so much and have had a blast. Our travels here were uneventful, except for some drunk Ukranians on our flight to Uganda. They passed out though once we started to fly. We arrived at 9 p.m.. Our driver, Steve, picked us up the next morning and we drove to Kampala to pick up our guide, Carol, and paid for the rest of our trek. Kampala is a city of 4 million and is crazy-congested with traffic. Drivers are scary! Anyway, we drove 10 or so hours to Bwindi National Forest where we stayed for 2 nights in a tent camp. The forest was beautiful with low mountains and lots of foliage. On our second day we set off to view the gorillas. There are 3 groups, and luckily our guide signed us up for the closest one, which has about a 30-45 min. walk. It took a little longer than expected as one of the 6 others in our group was very out of shape. Anyway, we treked up farm land and only at the very end entered into the impenetrable forest. We walked about 50 yards and found the silverback grazing away on morning glory vines. We stood about 10 feet away from him,but he could've cared less that we were there! We spent about an hour watching the 18 members of the group, including some adorable baby gorillas and 2 adolescents, which seemed to playing King of the Tree. The other noticeable characteristic was how rank they smelled!