Gorillas in the mist 10/12/18
Let me just talk about how terrible I feel. I've had food poisoning for 2+ days and it's not getting better. When I told myself to not eat the tomato in Entebbe, don't eat the fucking tomato. No produce. Only cooked items. I feel like shit and I feel bad for Andy since he's on his own for the bird watching this pm. It's my own damn fault. Anyways...Godwin picked us up yesterday am at 7 for a long ass drive to Biwindi Impenetrable Forest. Google showed something like 8, nope 11 hours including limited stops. I slept most of the day due to my death-like feeling but Andy had to suffer to hard gas and breaking over each towns' speed bumps. Any would finally get Godwin to stop so he could take a picture and I'd sit w/ the van door open. Kids walking to/from school would come check me out. The first group of girls gave me high 5s over and over. Some were shy, others started giving my arms and legs high 5s. The next group of kids were boys and they just waved and waved. One tried to sell me his sister's bracelet. The countryside in the rainforest is full of banana trees, pineapple, all kinds of terraced land on the steep mountain hills.
We arrived at the forest at 6 and check into our cottage. Not a bad place for the budget accommodations. Toilet and shower in the room are enough for me. Now I understand why they call it impenetrable, this is quite the jungle. We had dinner in the dining room looking out into the jungle. We are going to climb through this tomorrow to find gorillas? Wow.The funniest thing happened. Since I wasn't feeling well I went to bed early. There are two separate beds so I picked one, the other for Andy. Andy came into the room, it was dark. He sat in my bed for a while then got into the other bed. He thought it was odd his bed was warm. When he put his legs in, they left a warm fuzzy thing in his bed- he thought it was a monkey and almost screamed! He quickly found out it was a hot water bottle the staff put into the beds. It was hysterical! Thank fucking god that didn't happen to me, I would have lost my shit. Godwin told us the following morning of a lady who stayed here and did lose her shit. Some kind of warning would be good...
This morning we got up at 6 to prep for our gorillas tracking today. I was feeling better and the breakfast of fruit was perfect (I thought). We went to the visitor's center in the park where we were immediately welcomed by the cultural dance. I love drums, I love dancing, but there's something about culture performances that I don't enjoy. Perhaps it in the uninvited performance and money donations that will occur. The group of visitors broke down into smaller groups and we had 8 people in ours. They all got porters since 4 of them are in their 60s. Should I get a porter to push me up the hill since I have no energy? Nah, I'd never hear the end of it, plus I think we'll be walking pretty slowly with the others in the group.
The day was clear and moist from the hard thunderstorm the evening before. This is a nice contrast from the very dry and dusty Tanzania. We walked down the road, onto the path, crossed a river and slid our way up the muddy hill. We really didn't hike for too long. We were told 2-8 hours. I originally was hoping for the 8 but now everything has changed and the hour seemed like a lot. We first came across the gorillas in the trees. We only have an hour with them when they are on the ground so we waited and found one guy on the ground. The guide and treckers look and feel super comfortable around these huge animals. Our group was initially hesitant to get close since this guy could rip our arms out and you could see his power. Andy got close, really close. The gorilla was staring him down.
