now or never

       He looked straight at me, his face revealing nothing.  Our eyes caught. His stare was benign and uninterested, as one might observe a stranger in passing at an airport.   Why me?  Why would he glance in my direction?  He stood.  He was tall, over six feet, I would assume. He moved towards me.  I shook, both with fear and excitement, my heart racing.  He headed straight for me, and my eyes widened into a stare, locked on his every move.  Was I in harms way? Closer now.  Closer, my chest heaving as I tried to breathe.  Within several feet of me he reached out his strong arm, and as he came by, he used it to nudge me out of the way.  My eyes following, he walked on, not looking back.  He  was a silverback mountain gorilla and I had spent the last twenty-four hours trying to get to him.

      The trek to find gorillas, I discovered, begins the moment you decide you would like to have a wildlife experience like no other in the world. Only fifty-four permits are granted per day. That’s all. Most people, who come, find a tour group to take care of their flight, the permit, and transportation details a year in advance. I didn’t know about gorilla trekking a year ago. I didn’t even know I would ever be in Rwanda.  

       My new friends at the hostel said that sometimes it was possible, if it was just one person, to get a permit at the last minute due to a cancellation, because if people are sick they can’t be near the gorillas. The primates are so genetically close to humans that they can catch our diseases, yet haven’t built up any immunity. I asked them how I would find out about such an opening.

        “Just hop on a motorbike taxi and have them take you downtown to the permit office.” 

       “A motorbike taxi?” 

        “Yea, they're cheap, and easy because they weave in and out of traffic jams.”

       “Do I have to provide my own helmet?”  I pointed to the one she held in her hands.

       She laughed and said,

       “No, I brought my own, I’m here for six months and my inner Larry David wouldn’t let me put a public helmet on my hair.”

       “I’m headed that way,” said Marc, “hop on a bike and meet me downtown, I’ll show you where the permit office and the bus station are located.”

       I walked to the top of the road, and flagged a bike.  I didn’t have an inner Larry David so I put the potentially germy helmet right on my head and off we went, weaving dangerously through traffic like a video game.  Downtown, Marc pointed to a small alley.

        “Down there and turn left. That’s where the bus station is believe it or not, and across the way, down the hill is the permit office.  Good luck.”  I walked into the office of the Rwanda Tourism Board with low expectations.

       Lets see, I thought, it takes half a day to get there, and I’m required to be at the park entrance at 7:00am for briefing or I forfeit my ticket, so I would need to leave the day before and stay overnight nearby.

       “Would you possibly have a permit for two days from now?" I asked.

       “Sorry, we don’t.  Sold out. Would you like me to check the day after?”

       “No, that’s the day I fly out.”

       “Oh, wait we do have one for tomorrow, and looking at the clock I’d say if you hurry, you’d have just enough time to go pack a bag and catch a bus up to the mountain.”

       I stood there thinking quickly:  I‘ve heard you have to take two buses to two different towns of which I did not know the names; get a ride from there to a lodge, somehow get to the entrance by 7:00 am, and hire a driver ahead of time, to take you from the park entrance to the start of the trek to see your family of gorillas. That is so many terrifying variables. I don’t speak the language, and if I mess up anywhere along the way I lose the chance to see the gorillas. My heart was pounding.  No time to plan. No time to book a reservation, so possibly no place to sleep.  It’s ridiculous how this keeps happening, choosing between, immediately or not at all. This is a crazy way to live a life. I paced back and forth. I'm afraid to navigate these unknowns alone. I’m here though, and I’ll never have this opportunity again.

       “Yes, I’ll take it.” 

       On the first mini bus I smiled as I sat in the familiar fold-down seat in the middle of the isle, with my pack on my lap.  I breathed deeply. I looked out the window at the beautiful landscape of cultivated hills, and listened to the lilting sounds of Kinyarwanda being spoken around me. I had a few more modes of transportation to figure out, and hopefully, if the lodge were at capacity, they would at least have a couch. A motorbike took me the last leg of the trip and as we rode through the countryside, beautiful Rwandan children stood at the side of the road waving and smiling the entire way.

       I was up at 5:00am for the big day.  The lodge served breakfast early knowing we would need sustenance for the hike. The night before when I'd arrived, I immediately began quizzing the other guests as to whether they were going gorilla trekking, and had they hired their driver from the entrance to the trek? Each driver comes at a cost of eighty American dollars, round trip back to the entrance of the park.  If you find people to share the car, then you reduce your cost. I rounded up four people, and we hired a driver. Having someone to share the experience with was going to make the day that much more enjoyable.

        At the briefing, in the morning, we were assigned to one of the seven family groups on the mountain, and were told we would stay seven meters apart from the gorillas at all times for safety and to respect their space. Upon first site of the family, the clock would start ticking and we would be given one hour to observe. We drove forty-five minutes through the countryside to the base of our trek.  Our two guides met us, and although the gorillas are peaceful, each was carrying a rifle for our protection. The gorillas live between 7, 000 to 14,000 ft in elevation so we hiked an hour and a half straight up through farmland to Volcano National Park, the edge of one of the last high rain forests in the world. 

       Once in the forest the vegetation became incredibly dense. We rolled down our sleeves and pants legs because of the stinging nettles.  The others brought gloves, but not having any, I brought socks to protect my hands. Our guides used machetes to create a path for us leading towards the general area of where the family was last seen. We thrashed our way through the forest.  The radio crackled and the trackers said they had spotted the family! Our guide began to make unusual guttural noises; he said to announce to the gorillas that we meant no harm. The trackers guarded our packs, as we were not allowed to take anything but a camera, with no flash, into the area.

        I heard a guttural sound being returned.  We pulled back the brush and there was a mama playing and wrestling with her young one!  The clock started ticking as I gasped a cry of joy.  These gentle giants rolled, tumbled and snuggled with each other. The love between the two was palpable and so beautiful to watch.  We followed them up to another spot where they gathered with the rest of the family.  We quickly learned that the gorillas had not been given the seven-meter rule, which is how we had several close encounters with them. They went about their day, not caring we were there, but brushing up against us from time to time.
       I watched with a sense of wonder and awe. They were so similar to us, that it caused us self reflection. It was easy for me to understand why Diane Fossey and Jane Goodall had made a life's work studying these amazing primates.
       It was truly one of the most thrilling, and shortest hours of my life.

Rwandan hillside

The Virunga Mountains near the lodge

dawn

sunrise

      

the dense forest

      

almost asleep

The silver, or gray hair on his back identifies him as the male and the leader of the group

gorilla love