Visiting the Sabinyo Gorillas

Jaw-dropping.  Once-in-a-lifetime experience.  Surreal.  Raw.  

In other words, totally worth $500 and the hassle.  Even today, nearly five days later, all five of us are raving about seeing the gorillas.  It was truly one of the most amazing experiences of our lives.    

The guides take note of the gorillas' locations in the evenings and then again in the mornings, but the groups are always moving so you never know how far you'll have to hike to see them.  We were assigned the Sabinyo group, which has nine members and the largest silverback ever recorded at 220 kg (484 lbs).  There is usually only one silverback per group, and it's the oldest male (hence, the grey hair).  Ours was 38 years old. The silverback- and only the silverback- mates with all the females in the group, so the younger males will often leave the group in search of females to poach and make his own group.  Females usually only have one baby at a time, and they breast feed them three years!  

We drove about 20 minutes from park HQ to start our hike, but before we could even begin, the radio buzzed to tell us the gorillas were on the move.  Our excitement level rose about 5 notches.  We got back in the vehicle and drove even deeper into country where we once again started our hike. 

(For a mental picture, we were all decked out in major hiking gear: zip off pants, hiking boots, backpacks, water, etc. ready to hike for hours.  Courtney even had waterproof matches.  The guidebook suggested that Rwanda was not only a more beautiful place to see the gorillas than Uganda but also offered more strenuous hiking.  As we started our hike, the guides even equipped us with hand carved walking sticks.)

8:15 AM:  hike begins.  

8:30 AM: FIRST GORILLA!!!!!  (Excitement level is through the roof)

For a brief moment we were disappointed that our grueling hike was only a short stroll, but the thrill of seeing a moving black thing through the trees made us quickly forget.  The guides told us to put down our sticks (so they don't view them as weapons) and our bags.  We were only allowed to take our cameras.  We crept closer and discovered that the gorilla we saw was the huge silverback.  We stopped about 4 meters away and watched him strip the tree bark.  Apparently it's still a mystery why some of the groups eat the tree bark and others don't.  The guides seemed to believe it was more medicinal than nutritional.  They also said that other groups who didn't eat the bark would start eating bark if they saw a group doing it.  

We followed the silverback into the forest and came upon the other members of the group.  In total, we got to spend an hour watching and photographing these majestic  animals.  It's nearly impossible to describe the experience, but some highlights include:

• Seeing the silverback strip a 3 foot piece of bark in one swift motion
• Watching the baby try to climb on it's mom's back
• Mother gorilla glaring at us for a good minute after we became a little too interested in her baby
• One of the adults staring and briefly baring his teeth before turning away
• The guides making low, rumbling "gorilla noises" to keep them calm
  
• All 9 of them in a line going back into the forest and glancing over their shoulders as if to say "come on, you're getting behind!"

Between the five of us, we have hundreds of pictures (most not very good) and several videos, that will be appearing on Facebook and other places as soon as we get better internet connections.  Hopefully we can post a few shortly.