4 Hours Up!

We met early in the morning at the Wildlife Authority HQ with the rangers and other tourists. We watched a short film and then listened to David one of the rangers explaining the do's and don'ts. We were then split into groups to visit the different families, low and behold we were on the hard trek! But, we were visiting the Habinyanja group which had 19 family members, so a mixture of excitement and anxiety!

In our group were 3 more tourists, 2 Americans with their South African guide and our Australian friend, Grant.

We set off in two vehicles as we were also accompanied by several rangers. The vehicle we were in couldn't go any further as the roads were so bad, therefore we jumped in with the Americans who had a more superior vehicle.

We stopped and were met by porters and also introduced to the 'emergency team' who basically are incredibly fit people who come in after you and carry you to the Gorillas and then carry you out! (They do come with a hefty price, but only you can agree to them coming to help you).

Our porter Lorhna insisted on taking our daypack (which was so heavy as it was full of water).

We started off on our trek, not so bad to start off with a rolling path through farms. We suddenly hit a very steep ascent through a tea plantation with the sun shining right down on us. It took some time to get up and we kept stopping to drink and cool down. At the top of the plantation before we went into the forest, Steph had to sit down as she felt quite ill. Turns out she was dehydrated and welcomed a rehydration drink. After a few minutes the drink had kicked in and we were off again.

The deeper we went into the forest, the harder it got to keep steady on our feet. Well, they don't call it the impenetrable forest for nothing! The rangers hacked their way creating a path for us.

We won't lie, the trek was hard and we were travelling at a slowish pace, the aim was to reach the Gorillas before it rained.

Every now and then someone would shout 'Ants' and you had to jump as high and far as you could over the nest. Lorhna our porter was incredible she helped Steph and made sure she didn't fall over. The American lady was also very looked after by her porter and kept her on her feet as well. Andy and the other two men were left to keep themselves on their feet!

At one point everyone felt a little apprehensive, the ground we were walking on felt very unstable, it was like there was no solid ground, just layers of vegetation and not much room to place your feet. We pushed on and were finally told to stop, we were there!

We were told to leave everything with the porters and just bring our cameras. We had made it to the Gorillas and there was no rain!

We walked for a couple more minutes, just us tourists and the rangers and then there they were, the most incredible sight...

Bwindi

The journey to Bwindi was very long and the roads got worse. We drove through pretty little villages with smiling faces from the children who waved at us as we carried on our journey. As we arrived, we drove through the last village which was mainly a village of crafts with lots of goods out on display. Andy tried to cover Steph's eyes, but too late! There would be some shopping at some point!

We arrived at Buhoma Community Lodge, our accommodation for our Gorilla trek. Our room was in a great location with a view straight out into Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, fantastic.

The room itself was a big Army style tent inside a wooden hut type surrounding. The bathroom was out the back. Everything was a little basic, but comfortable and with electricity and hot water, so what more do you need? Andy wasn't sure at first, mainly because the bed was on the short side and he imagined his feet sticking out the end of the bed getting attacked by mosquitoes! Turned out that he just fitted inside the bed and mosquito net.

We went up to the main building where we bumped into our Australian friend, Grant again and an English doctor. The doctor had been on the Gorilla trek that day and described his experience, it sounded brilliant and we were excited for our turn the next day.

Steph was a little worried about which family we would be visiting as everyone was classing the three families into three groups, Easy Trek, Medium Trek and Hard Trek. Easy was 1 hour there 1 hour back, Medium was 2 hours there and 2 hours back and the Hard Trek was anything between 3+ hours there and 3+ hours back.

Steph had suffered a fitness set back just before we came to Uganda. She managed to strain her Achilles tendon 2 weeks before we were due to travel and the doctors were discussing whether to put her in plaster, instead complete rest and immobilisation was agreed.

But before all this, Steph had suffered from a dislocated knee that had caused a lot of time away from exercise. Steph was reassured she would be fine.

You don't get to choose which family you want to visit, there is a chance you can swap with other people if they agree. Hamid came to check on us and we asked which family we would be visiting, he wouldn't tell us, just that it was the best family! We would find out the next day...