Gorilla Trek or Trick

Gorilla

SABYINYO VOLCANO, RWANDA: One of our two guides points to a volcano mountain partially hidden in a cloud. “Our trackers tell us we will find the gorillas over there on the slope of the Sabyinyo, where Rwanda, the Congo, and Uganda meet. We may encounter an elephant or a mountain buffalo on the way so for our protection, the three gentlemen over there with the AK-47 rifles will accompany us. They won’t kill them, mind you, but simply try to scare them away.” There are six of us tourists; one, of whom asks, “How far do we need to hike before we see the gorillas?” “Our trackers tell us five hours. We’ll spend an hour with the gorillas. It should take us three hours to get back — so nine hours total.” The guide explains that the trackers find where the gorillas are nesting the evening before, than early in the morning go to their nest and follow their foraging trail. “There should be seventeen gorilla in the family we see,” our guide continues, showing us pictures of each of the gorillas and their dates of birth. “There are a total of eighteen gorilla families in the area. We have been assigned to the Hirwa family.” As we set off, we are each issued a walking stick. The ground is slippery and muddy. I’m wondering how my quasi-boots are going to hold up. We pass a few small potato patches before heading into a bamboo forest. The walking, although sometimes steep and slippery, isn’t difficult. Our guide stops in an opening that gives us a panoramic view of the valley behind us and announces, “I have news: we have only three more hours.” But then the landscape abruptly changes, from the bamboo forest to a hilly terrain of thick low bushes; so thick that we have to walk over them rather around them. It’s not easy and I often stumble and fall. “How am I going to do this for another three hours?” I ask myself out of breath. I see the others are struggling too, but they are all at least a third my age and looking very fit. Another half hour and we reach a spot where the mountain drops off sharply and where we see miles more of the bush that we’ve been struggling to get through. It’s the young woman in our group who breaks the silence and whispers, “There’s a gorilla down there!” The rest of us don’t see it and the guides laugh, “It’s just a mountain buffalo.” The young lady persists, “I swear I saw a gorilla there.” The guides, smiling, finally relent, “Yes, this is where the gorillas are.” They had been playing a trick on us. They knew it wasn’t going to take three hours to get to the gorillas, but even if it had the encounter would have been well worth it.