Gorillas (and mzungus) in the mist

Rwanda is aptly known as the ‘Pays des Milles Collines’ (Land of a Thousand Hills). Our group split up into 4 groups to explore some of these hills, all in search of the mountain gorilla.

This was my second visit to the gorillas. In 2009, I visited the Susa group, the one that Dian Fossey studied. And this time, I was fortunate enough to visit them again.

Josh, Sonny, Dom, Ron, and I were in the same group, accompanied by three other individual travellers: Ingrid, a Kiwi; Alex from Bris-Vegas; and Hamish from the UK. Our guides were Patrick and Roger, and they gave us a briefing on the park and the Susa group.

The park spans Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC. In Rwanda, there were 18 gorilla groups until recently when one group came over into the Rwandan side from Uganda, making 19 in total.

The Susa group is the largest with 35 members. Only the research group is larger with 44 but members of the public cannot visit them. Kurira is the number one Silverback and the group contains twins which is a rarity. The last time I saw them, the twins would have been six. Now they are nine, and one of them has a 3 month old baby.

We were told you can differentiate gorillas by their nose prints and were taught how to make gorilla noises like our group did last time, a kind of double grunt to tell them you are not a threat.

Our group of 8 set out in two 4x4s for a ridiculously bumpy one hour drive to the Susa group trek starting point. I was crammed in the back in one of two separate seats elevated so high that my head hit the ceiling with every bump. It wasn’t at all a surprise when we got a flat tyre as the road was so rough but it was a surprise when our driver attempted to re-inflate the tyre instead of changing it. As it turns out, the tyre had to be changed so we used the one 4x4 to make two trips to the starting point.

The beginning of the trek through farmland was very familiar as I’d done it so recently. Villagers were all calling out ‘Mzungu!’ and waving excitedly at us. The walk was fairly steep and the pace had initially been set quite quickly. I was breathing heavily but managed to keep up. Josh, however, didn’t fare so well, and threw up just before we reached Buffalo Wall, the entrance to the park. Bear in mind we haven’t done much exercise lately and Josh also had two Doxy pills that morning by accident which could’ve had something to do with it.

During our quick rest in front of the wall, I asked Patrick what his favourite experience had been with the gorillas and he mentioned two: one where the second silverback was at the back of the group and got ‘too curious’; and another where the babies were drunk on bamboo and jumped all over them!

Roger then told us to be prepared for a 45 minute to one hour hike but just 15 minutes into it, we found the trackers waiting for us. Roger was very surprised to see them so soon – we were just lucky (or unlucky I guess if one wanted a long hike!) The path was definitely suited for short people – despite bending over as low as I could, I kept getting caught in the vines and bamboo.

When we reached the trackers, we left our bags and walking sticks behind, taking only our cameras with us. As soon as we walked through the thick bushes, we could see their black fur.

The Susa group were resting and the babies were playing around. One adolescent was doing cartwheels either to get around or to just entertain himself.

I asked to see the newborn twins and Roger led me over to see them. It was tricky walking around them as the leaf litter was extremely slippery. As I was looking at the newborns, one gorilla had an altercation with another and another two got involved. The result: one gorilla started charging in my direction and one charged Ron, Sonny and Hamish. I was petrified. I was so petrified I didn’t know what to do – not that you can really do anything aside from standing your ground – the last thing I felt like doing! The thought I should be filming it did cross my mind but I was unable to operate my camera at that point in time – my body wasn’t responding aside from shaking with fear. Ron was the closest to them and had to end up moving otherwise he would’ve been bowled over! Nonetheless, all of our hearts were racing after that incident.

After settling down and actually being able to take some photos,

the gorillas walked off in search of food. ‘Play time’ (if you could call it that!) was over. We followed them into thicker bush and watched them eat.

One silverback cheekily started mating with a female – unless they’re the No.1 silverback, they’re not allowed to mate with the females and will often be beaten by the No.1 if they’re caught in the act. He looked very guilty for a while (I thought) but then carried on as normal, eating and pretending nothing had happened!

We saw the gorillas walk off in a chain again with babies on their backs while one was swinging from a tree. Another two, one with a baby on its back, walked right in front of us – they must’ve been about 1-2 metres away. It was incredible.

They really are beautiful creatures but they’re still quite scary!

We were told when we had 12 minutes left and it felt like we’d only been there for moments. Before we knew it our hour was up so we sadly had to leave them but having seen them play, charge, eat and mate was a pretty mind-blowing experience for just one hour!

Remembering the Rwandan Genocide

Coming into Rwanda for the second time, I remembered what I had thought the first time I came – that the country and its people have come so far since the horrific genocide in 1994. The human spirit here is incredible although the scars both physical and mental would still run deep.

It was my second visit to the Genocide Museum and I was just as affected as the first, however, this timeI wrote down excerpts from the walls that both moved and disturbed me.

One such excerpt was that as early as 1990, Kangura, one of the propaganda newspapers, published the Hutu Ten Commandments, stating that any Hutu associating with or carrying out any business with Tutsi neighbours and friends was a traitor.

Another was that Hutu radicals dehumanised the Tutsi by calling them ‘inyenzi’ meaning cockroach, had a pre-prepared death list and promised an apocalypse.“Genocide was instant… Rwanda had turned into a nation of brutal, sadistic merciless killers and of innocent victims overnight…Neighbours turned on neighbours, friends on friends…even family on their own family members.” They used machetes, clubs, guns and any blunt tool to inflict as much pain on their victims as possible.

Over a million people died. “Many families had been totally wiped out, with no one to remember or to document their deaths. The streets were littered with corpses. Dogs were eating the rotting flesh of their owners. The county smelt of the stench of death. The genocidaires had been more successful in their evil aims than anyone would have dared to believe. Rwanda was dead.”

The videos were the most moving as I remembered from last time as was the kids’ room remembering the kids killed in the genocide. It lists facts such as their name, age, mannerisms, behaviour, favourite food, etc. followed by the brutal manner in which they were killed. The tombstones in the gardens are also a reminder of the lives lost along with a wall into which the names of victims they have been able to gather so far have been engraved.

The country and its people really have come a long way since those horrific days. As stated in the Museum, “It is impossible for us to forget the past. It is also extremely painful to remember… We need to learn about the past…we also need to learn from it.”

Gripe of the week – stealing birthday cake

Our group had just sung Happy Birthday horrendously out of tune (as usual) to Karen and were cutting up the cake. Once we started taking a piece each, a girl from another group ran up to our table, snatched a piece of birthday cake and then ate it back at her table. Don’t get me wrong, we’re happy to share, but when someone does it without asking and without even saying ‘Happy Birthday’ we really don’t appreciate it. I mean, who does that?! And then the cake thief had the nerve to glare at me when I took the rest of the cake to offer it to our own crew! The mind boggles…

In search of the elusive leopard

Nearly all of our group went to Lake Manyara, Ngorogoro Crater and the Serengeti and you can understand why. Despite the expense, the wildlife here was definitely a trip highlight. 17 of us split up into two Landcruisers, 8 in one and 9 in the other.

Gabriel, our extremely knowledgeable guide, was accompanied by another guide, Robert, and two chefs / support crew who prepared us delicious meals with tonnes of fresh veggies and fruit.

Everyone had different requests – Karen and Shaun wanted to see a hyena, Kris wanted to see a cheetah and I wanted to see the elusive leopard. The entire month Keith and I volunteered in Thanda, we didn’t see a single leopard. We saw one briefly in 2009 and before then it had been a while since I’d seen one so I was very keen to see one again. We had three days and three different game parks to try and fulfil everyone’s requests – and we were all hoping this would be the place.

Lake Manyara National Park

Lake Manyara National Park runs along one of the Western walls of the Great Rift Valley. As continental plates separated, volcanoes erupted forming features like Ngorogoro Crater, Mt. Meru and Kilimanjaro. Here the land collapsed below the high wall as plates continued (and still continue today) to separate.

Manyara is meant to be known for its underground water forest and tree climbing lions, neither of which we saw. What we did see though are hundreds of white storks at the entrance, blue monkeys grooming each other,

dik-dik,

crowned and helmeted guineafowl,

elephant, hippos, silvery cheeked hornbill,

vervet monkeys, impala, African fish eagle, a troop of over 100 Olive baboons, one of which seemed to be removing a cramp (we were just taught to do the exact same thing in our scuba course!),

pied kingfisher, grey headed kingfisher, wildebeest, warthog, water monitor lizard, crowned crane, buffalo, zebra, pink flamingos on the lake, brown snake eagle, butterflies, bishop birds and a hammerkop. But the highlight here for me was seeing dwarf mongoose (mongeese?!) popping their heads out of holes in a termite mound one by one and then all at once, just as fascinated by us as we were by them!

The lowlight was the bloody tse-tse flies! They are back!!! Luckily I only got bitten once on the foot but it brought back memories of the tse-tse fly plague in Angola and I really didn’t want to have ANOTHER sleeping sickness test (or another ‘monster’!) It could’ve been worse though – somehow Sonny managed to get some manky bites on his arm – we think either from a fly that expels acid when it’s crushed or from something laying eggs under his skin.

Either way – not very pleasant, but fortunately antibiotic cream seems to be working for him, for now.

Ngorogoro Crater

Most of the landscape of Ngorogoro was shaped by rifts and volcanoes. Essentially a mountain collapsed, causing the crater.

25,000 animals live in the crater and it definitely shows as hardly a minute passes without seeing something.

Not long after we entered the crater, we saw a lion curling its tongue – I wondered if only some lions could do this – just like only some of us can?!

We then came across the rest of the pride lazing on the side of the road,

black backed jackal,

baboons, buffalo, ostrich,

Thomson’s gazelle, kori bustard, a silvery striped jackal, black rhino in the distance, sacred ibis, heron, yellow-billed stork, Egyptian goose, oxpeckers, blacksmith plovers, elephant, hippo, Jackson’s hartebeest, cheetah camouflaged in the yellowy grass, Superb starling, waterbuck, zebras playing around mounting and kicking each other,

a pregnant gazelle that ejected and ate its placenta right in front of us (if only we had more time to watch the birth),

spotted hyenas stalking zebra then giving up and walking right past them, a wildebeest and a warthog family (evidently they weren’t hungry or just couldn’t be bothered!),

a lake filled with pink flamingos,

and an eland, the largest living antelope (along with the giant eland).

Serengeti

The name Serengeti comes from the Maasai word ‘Serengit’, meaning land of ‘endless plains’. With kilometres of plains as far as the eye can see, you can understand why.

We witnessed the start of the migration, seeing huge herds of zebra and wildebeest congregating and slowly moving North.

There were also many herds (memories) of elephants

with cute babies,

one of which seemed to be trying to learn how to use its trunk,

zebras linking necks en masse checking for predators in both directions

and one rolling around on its back,

Agama lizards,

Superb Starlings,

mice,

topi,

hartebeest, a baboon family,

long-tailed starling,

buffalo, giraffe, impala, hippos, marabou stork, Ruppel’s vulture, batula eagle, tawny eagle, blackbacked jackals, secretary birds, gazelle, kori bustard, warthog, ostrich, cheetah, lappet-faced vulture, white-bellied bustard, white-shouldered kite, helmeted guineafowl, lilac breasted roller, bushbuck, and tonnes of hyena.

We had all wanted to see a kill and were lucky enough to come across one.Three lions had blood smeared all over their faces from gorging on the flesh of a wildebeest whose legs were splayed in the air. But not long after we arrived, they dragged it off into the safety of the bushes.

Just when we thought the day couldn’t get any better, we came across another vehicle that had found a leopard in a sausage tree!

All of us were over-excited even though it was far away, hard to see and just relaxing on a branch, looking up only once or twice. Hyenas were running past on the other side of the road but they couldn’t turn our attention away from the leopard. We reluctantly agreed to leave as we’d taken a million photos of the leopard in the same couple of positions, but then just a couple of minutes down the road, we found several vehicles bunched closely together. Almost unbelievably, it was another leopard! This one was walking by the side of the road and crossed it right in front of us! It then started stalking some gazelle and crept up on them quite successfully despite the wildebeest and birds flying overhead making warning calls. A noisy maintenance truck drove past and sadly the leopard lost the element of surprise so it gave up on the now alert gazelle, and instead went on the search for new, unsuspecting prey. The sun had started to set and sadly we couldn’t stay and watch it any longer as we would’ve been fined by the rangers if we were there after dark.

It just so happened to be Karen’s birthday and everyone agreed it was a pretty incredible one – with not only the hyena she wanted to see, but also a lion kill, cheetah, leopards, and a cake, all in the middle of the Serengeti!

In Ngorogoro and Serengeti combined, we saw 90 elephants, 35 giraffe, 21 lions, 17 hyena, 6 cheetah, 6 jackals, and 2 leopards. So, Karen and Shaun definitely saw enough hyena, Kris sawhis cheetah and I saw my two leopard in just one evening! A-MA-ZING! Gabriel joked he had all of the animals on speed dial and called them to ensure we would see them. Whatever the reason, we couldn’t have asked for anything more.