Today we woke up early as usual at around 4 am, we first had breakfast before leaving our camp at 5h30 in one of our campsites vans with another 6 people from our group, and took a 2h bus on the bumpiest roads imaginable, with what felt like no suspension. We arrived half asleep at the operation camp for the gorilla tracking around 8, there we gave them our passports, for them to check our permits, and sat down to get a briefing about what the day would be like ahead. Following this briefing, we met the guide who would be leading our group through the mountains, as well as the army men with big guns, who would be joining us to keep us safe from the gorillas.
we were led back to the car for a 30 mins journey, we stopped in a little village and started our hike. We first went up a hill for about 30 minutes, once we reached the top, our guide told us to wait there until the trackers had a firm location. After about an hour of waiting, we started walking again down the hill, into the valley on the other side.
Almost immediately after reaching the bottom of the valley, we were met by the trackers, who gave us a briefing on how to behave around the gorillas. we then followed him into the jungle, as he cut a path with his machete. 5 minutes later, we saw the first gorilla just chilling and eating. Every time we saw one we would try to get closer, but they would get bored with us and move away, so our guide would continue cutting a path down further into the valley, to get closer to them, going through some pretty slippery paths. We spent about an hour chasing the gorillas, and was able to see about 2 silverbacks, one almost attacked our guard who just raised his machete and he retreated. We also managed to see some babies and a few younger males and females.
After our encounter, we then took the same path backwards and had to go back up to the top of the hill, where we stopped to eat lunch before we continued back to the village we had been dropped off. the bus then came to find us, but before giving us our certificates, they organised a mini ceremony. our trip back took about 2h, still as bouncy as the way there, we ended up arriving at camp 4h30 before the hour group, who had difficulty finding the pack of gorillas. back at camp, I took a nap, before we decided to take an old fashioned canoe with 2 other people onto the lake. Except the canoe could steer properly, so we ended up going round in circles.
We watched the sunset from our canoes, before coming back to grab dinner with the other group, who had just gotten back. We exchanged stories over dinner, especially from the other group, who had managed to witness an encounter between 2 gorilla families where the silverbacks of each family ended up fighting in front of them.