Gorillas!

Oh man. Can I just say that today we had the experience of our life. I mean, I’m sure we will experience many other things that will be pretty stinking incredible but today….this takes the cake.

Let me start you off with our journey. Yesterday was national elections. So, we start our hike up the mountain at 6:30 am. I get to the top and I am waiting on Elise to return on the moto with Jarod. He finally gets there and we start trying to find a bus. Since they’re having elections (or “erections” as they call them because they interchange their l’s and r’s freely), the buses aren’t running. We finally got a ride with a friend who is an engineering consultant for several rice mills in Rwanda. He stopped and offers to take us to Kigali with a quick stop at his rice factory that is generally about 15 km’s off the main road. On this day though, he needed to check out all the equipment and walk around talking to the workers. It ended up being about 2 hours of work. Then, on the way out we were all talking and he took a wrong turn. So, we added lost to our day. We were fretting as we absolutely had to get to Kigali and then on to Musanze. However, we made it at 3:12 to Kigali and literally ran to the bus stop to catch the bus to Musanze. The buses were all booked. Of course right? Well, we ended up getting one and before it was leaving we absolutely had to go to the bank. As we started using the ATM it starts to spit our money out and just stops. So, we ran to the other ATM and the same thing happens. I am literally almost in tears, sweating and stressed that we’re not going to make it and our money is going to go down the drain. So, I go sit down to order some food at a really nice place called Bourbon. It’s a coffee shop with great great food and drinks. So, I order some food for me and Jarod, she returns to tell me they are out of my food. So, I order 2 of the same thing that I had ordered Jarod…but then she comes back and says they are out of that too. At this point, I was not a nice person and yelled “well what do you have?” Not my best and shining moment. But, then I felt terrible and apologized and just asked for a drink. Jarod makes it back and we go to the bus stop. As we’re waiting…the bus doesn’t show. It ends up being over 25 minutes late and then everyone got into a fight trying to shove each other out of the way to get on. As we’re leaving town he stops to fill up with gas. I’m stressing because PC has a new policy that we can’t be out traveling after 5:00 pm. Safety reasons. So, then as we’re stalled on the road because a new road is being built Jarod says “if we aren’t mellow by the end of these 2 years, we didn’t learn our lesson”. I said “well it’s been a year and I am not feeling mellow right now in one single way.” Haha! So finally, we arrive…..we get up early and go to the gorillas!

We finally saw the gorillas. It only took 11 months and 10 days of waiting and can I just say that it was worth every single moment. We started out walking thru the forest and less than probably 15 minutes after starting, our guide stops us to tell us that we are here and that soon we’ll see them. So we walk single file behind him thru the huge bamboo shoots and suddenly we see this little guy playing. Then, we turn past this big bush of bamboo and there sits the giant silver back, the chief. He’s just hanging out and vegging on some bamboo leaves. He doesn’t even take a break to look up at these 10 people who just stumbled upon him. Clearly this isn’t his first rodeo. As we stand there, I’m thinking this is insane…we’re like 21 feet away and our guide just keeps going until we’re literally less than 5 feet from him. Again, he never even moves. So we start taking photos and a momma turns around and has the cutest little guy on her lap. He was adorable. 6 months. Adorable!

While we’re sitting here just ogling over these beautiful apes, they are just eating, napping and playing as if we aren’t even there. This little baby comes over curious to see what I’m doing. He gets probably 2 feet away and is totally just staring at me as if he knows me. Of course, the guide then grunts at him and does a little semi charge to get him to back away because they don’t ever want them touching the humans. I completely understand this with all the diseases we could pass to them, but at this moment….this adorable little baby coming to me….I definitely wanted to pick him up and cuddle him. It was all I could do not to just scream from the cuteness. I mean, even Jarod said that experience could “melt even the hardest heart”. In total we probably stayed with the gorilla’s about an hour and 10 minutes. Our guide said we needed to go so unfortunately we had to say goodbye…but we will probably visit again.

It was truly the most wonderful experience and I recommend it to ANYONE visiting this country. I’m going to post pictures on Facebook and a few on here too.