Safari Reports
Gorillas on the 4th of July
A Duffle & Compass Exclusive Safari
July 1-12, 2009 in Rwanda & Uganda
Up at dawn, we first meet our porters. Mine are two lovely chaps. They help me through ever steepening fields of cultivation, past huts where the farmers and their families live. And finally, to the brink of the jungle where we meet the trackers who have been communicating with the head guide all morning. We learn the gorillas are close! We start up the steep, vine covered paths. I now have another guide who assigned just to me. His name is Mac, and he has a beautiful smile. Suddenly, we hear a crashing and breaking of trees and brush. Our head guide, who wields a machete and can mimic a Silverback better than Rich Little, rushes ahead. We climb one impossibly steep rise, slip back down around a tree and there, sitting waist deep in the vines, no more than eight feet away, is our Silverback. It was like pinch-me time. I thought of Dian Fossey and other accounts I’d read about this very rare experience, but even with that, I forced myself to just be there – no thinking. I was wrenched out of this blissful state with a huge crashing sound. An adolescent fell out of the tree overhead and hit with a hard thud at my feet, then farted, loudly. It’s all the roughage they eat, don’t you know.
- Barbara Bosson
