We did fly over Lake Victoria just after Sunrise. Landed at the Kasoro Airport midmorning. One interesting thing about the Kasoro Airport - a main road crosses the middle of the single landing strip. Whenever an airplane is arriving/leaving, someone has to stop the traffic. Sounded awfully strange until I thought about Fleet Week in Portland, with the raising of the bridges....
It was a multi-hour van ride to Bwindi. We stopped half-way to walk through a local village down to Lake Mutanda, where we rode in dugout canoes to the other side.
We continued the drive to Bwindi. Within the villages, most areas are connected by walking paths on the steep hillsides - not many roads. The roads between villages are very rough and slow. Enough rocking that by Bwindi, Jana's fitbit added 9000 steps.
Just before dinner we visited the Batwa - a forest-dwelling tribe that extends across Uganda/Congo/Rwanda. They have been largely displaced from the forests in an attempt to save the endangered mountain gorillas. However, this has put a strain on the Batwa, who used to hunt the mountains freely, but now must pay for goods and services from local villages. Maintaining their way of life has been a challenge.
June 13:
An early morning to prepare for a gorilla encounter. There are about 800 mountain gorillas left. None have survived in captivity, and it is no longer being attempted.
To help preserve the species, a number of actions have been taken. The government has moved out the Batwa (as mentioned above). The gorillas have been contained to a couple of mountain regions (thorn-trees did not work, electric fencing was considered cruel, so now they are planting a ring of tea-plants around the mountain 150m wide - gorillas don't eat tea leaves and don't like forging more than 50m to get to their next meal). Several families have been 'habituated' where naturalists spend time near them (for years) to get them used to people as being non-threatening - this allows for limited tourism and dollars to help protect the species.
Gorillas can travel multiple miles a day. Trackers follow the different gorilla families into the evening (when they nest), and are back at first light. This allows non-trackers (like us) to have a chance to catch up to a family to observe.
Three miles and about approx 1500ft decent, and we reached the forest. Fortunately, one of the families was not too deep within. We were allowed to spend an hour with one gorilla family (at a distance). Although we spotted 5 of the 11 in the family, much of our trek was following the Silverback male, who maintains a rear-position to protect his family. Although the canopy was very dense, we had a number of good sightings (mostly of the Silverback).
Gorilla males eat 25kg per day of plants (they are mostly vegetarian, except ants). Most of the day is spent eating. It takes a lot of calories to maintain a 500lb frame.
The steep climb out was more difficult and slower (at 7000 ft elevation, we were not going quickly - but we were not the slowest in the group, allowing us to mask our exhaustion). Fortunately, no one in our group had to call upon the "African Helicopter" (a call to town brings in a group of folks who drag you out on a stretcher for $300 - this happened with the other group today).
We are going to make another go of it tomorrow.
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