There were also some gorillas in the Pablo group that were not silverbacks.
They were pretty big too.
They were not very interested in us.
And a bit scary.
Especially when they decided they wanted to get somewhere fast.
But mostly they just ate.
Because there was food everywhere.
And gorillas like to eat.
The day after visiting the gorillas we decided to go on another hike. This time to see the golden monkeys in the Kabitwa group.
There were lots of them all over. The walk also wasn’t nearly as bad as the gorillas and we only had to get up to the bamboo forest and just through a small section of stinging nettles.
The monkeys really like to eat the wild celery.
They do not know how to chew with their mouths closed.
Some of them were hiding in the bamboo and hard to find.
They were pretty laid back and sleepy when we were there.
Out of the hundred or so golden monkeys there were some young ones.
They were a lot more active than the adults.
And as always, just as we were leaving they started jumping all over and playing.
Although some would just have a snack on the slender branches that the adults can’t sit on.
They were more fun than the adults.
They waved goodbye to us.
To see the gorillas we had to trek for 3.5 hours up the mountain. Rwanda is very beautiful whenever we turned around.
The first section was from the road through farms. To keep the sheep from eating the crops they are muzzled.
This plant is grown to mark borders between fields and keep the animals out of the fields in the first place.
After an hour or so we began trudging through the jungle.
The first bit was alright with the bamboo forest. However with no bamboo shoots this time of year we were going up higher into stinging nettle. Gorillas really like stinging nettle.
It is covered in big spines to inject you.
Unlike the gorillas we do not like the stinging nettles.
It isn’t just the leaves the stems are covered as well.
But this does not stop the gorillas from building nests in it or eating it.
Here we are in a clearing after a couple hours of hiking.
It got quite a bit thicker in most of the jungle.
Eventually we climbed up 700 m vertical bringing us up to 3350 meters.
That gave Matt altitude sickness, but we still had drugs leftover from Peru so that was cleared up after a few minutes.
Then we reached the gorillas in the Pablo group. This group has 33 members, including 4 silverbacks and 13 babies, four of which were too young to have names.
It took us 2.5 hours to hike back down.
Silverbacks are the mature males.
They are really big.
They eat a lot.
In the group we visited there were four.
We saw two of them.
You can only visit a family if the silverbacks are around otherwise the other members get agitated.
Also if the silverback come back he could get very aggressive.
I would not want to get entangled with a silverback.
Here’s a picture finally of the previously mentioned “silverback”.
The whole time we were there they ate.
Sometimes they would look over to see what we were up to.
Most of the time they were focused on what they were going to grab next and eat.
Because of the hill and where we could actually stand we ended up pretty close to them.
Kerri was very excited.
And terrified, don’t forget terrified.
As the hour was up and we started to go, so did the silverback. He walked right past all of us in the little clearing. That was the number two,not even the biggest one.
