How We See It: Gorilla Tracking!

This is THE thing to do in Kisoro. The town largely survives on the strength of a fairly constant stream of tourists stopping in town for the night before setting out early in the morning to the rainforests that surround the Virunga mountains. There, after 4 or 5 hours of hiking, guides lead you to a family group of the famous mountain gorillas. We had held off taking this adventure until Katrina's family was in town.

Only a few hundred of these unique, massive creatures exist on the planet and they're all in these forests, grazing through the slopes of these mountains. Their numbers are on the rise thanks to the increased attention and protection brought by the boost in tourism over the last twenty years when gorilla tracking started. This was preceded by a three-year period in which trackers and guides of the Ugandan Wildlife Authority were slowly introducing themselves to the 6-8 gorilla family groups of the forest, carefully and gradually habituating the gorillas to the presence of humans until they regarded us as common, nonthreatening features of the landscape.

That said, serious precautions are taken to make sure that humans and gorillas never get too close to one another and that we never do anything to agitate them toward aggression. Just watching a mature male mountain gorilla sleepily rip down a small tree to chew on the leaves is enough to inspire a healthy sense of fear and trembling in the heartiest explorer.

We made it up and down in one piece, all six of us (including three guides, one policeman [almost all with AK-47s], and two trackers who met us at the gorillas) and we'll never forget the harrowing climb through the mountainous forest nor the hushed, awesome hour we spent in the presence of these secretive colossi.