Just over a year ago, I was an African explorer. Ahhh, that was a wonderful time. When you're traveling, certain things can be much more exciting than they really are - like babies (although let's be honest, anyone who knows me knows that babies are almost always exciting to me).
The Impenetrable Forest in Uganda is one of the oldest forests on earth and let me tell you, it's thick and tropical. It's also the natural habitat for the mountain gorilla. One weekend, I took after Jane Goodall and trekked that mountainous forest to see those incredible animals in the wild.
Upon arriving at our campsite in Bwindi and as our host graciously showed us to our bungalo down a green winding path, he casually informed us that a couple families of the gorillas just had babies. My instant reaction was an overly enthusiastically elated exclamation: "BABiES?!?!?! I LOVE BABIES!!!" It took everyone off guard - even myself. The host didn't really know how to react, so he just started to laugh at me. My friend, Scott, who had endured my obsession with interacting with the kids wherever we would go, stopped mid step, looked at me with an unbelievable look on his face, and just busted out laughing. It was funny, but as I'm writing I realize that this might be one of those stories where you just really had to be there. But for me, it's worth writing down.
So the reason this story came to me today is because while we were on that mountain trek, (which was extraordinarily hard - we hiked up and down 5 mountains before we found them and had to hike those mountains again to get back home. That doesn't sound too bad, but we were in the rain forest. The ground was probably 8 inches deep of composting matter and was slippery. To add to the slipperiness, about a half hour into our trek the guide stopped and sent one of the porters back to camp to get a few pangas. Pangas are like machetes and Ugandans use them to "slice grass" and stuff. Up to that point we were walking on a nice trail. I didn't think I would need a walking stick and started to regret having to hold it the whole way. However, when the porter returned, to my surprise, we turned off the path and started to go straight up the steep steep hill side next to us on a path that our guide was forging with the newly arrived panga. We didn't exactly know where the gorillas were yet. So we wandered over mountain after mountain. The first mountain was no sweat, by the third, I was glad to have that walking stick. Finally, a radio call indicated where we needed to go. When we found them, they were absolutely amazing and all the pain of the trek diminished. Boy are they stinky! They're really beautiful, but STINKY. A couple times, I was only a few feet away from them, but usually, if we got too close, the guide would tell us to "extend back." The babies were SO cute! and the silver back was huge. They were eating a ton and swinging around in the tree tops. When our hour was up, we started the trek back over mountain after mountain. Eight hours later, I could hardly hold my balance on that slippery ground. My porter, Benard, walked closely behind me and would pick me up by the armpits when ever I slipped down the steep slippery non-existing path. It was amazing and worth it!)
Apologies for the tangential and long parenthetical statement, I'll carry on... while we were on the mountain trek, I met a cool lady who was starting to work for a safari company and for her job she just had to go on all the safaris in order to help her customers. Rough life, eh? She took tons of pictures and even some video. We exchanged emails and sent a few back and forth to share pictures. Oh, by the way, DON'T ever forget your camera when you are doing something like this!! Yep, that's what I did. So today I opened my email box to find a note from her. She finally uploaded a video she took of me looking at the baby gorillas!!! What a rad person to remember a flighty tourist who, over a year ago, forgot her camera when she was doing something really really cool in the wilderness. Here, check it out:
