Ploughing our path through the jungle We stood and
observed, bewitched, transfixed, speech- less, camera lenses clicking like
castanets, for fully an hour as, barely two metres away, baby gorilla fed
away f
LAS OF UGANDA
who stalk the jungle keep themselves well hidden. For us though the signs were good and getting better by the moment.
The next sign was the invisible grunting. I peered and squinted into the luxuriant vegetation to see where it might be coming from. My gaze wheeled fully 360°, and back again, before settling on the most enormous hand I ever saw, reaching up from ground level to pluck a green shoot. First a hand, then an arm, then a broad silver streak the length of the gorilla’s back, the sort of back you normally see propping up a rugby scrum; and finally, the whole immensity of the undisputed king of this particular corner of the African jungle. This guy was seriously impressive.
Sarah, our effervescent guide, briefed us in hushed Attenboroughesque tones: “If one of them should charge at you, crouch low in a squatting position, do not make eye contact, and whatever else you do, don’t retreat”. I was with
her on the squatting thing, the no eye contact made sense, but I must say she lost me on the don’t retreat bit. A multi storey car park on legs charges at me, I retreat. Armed only with a toilet roll and a mini Swiss army knife that gets stones out of horse’s hooves, I’d sooner lose face than lose my cahones.
As it turns out our hosts batted not so much as an eyelid at our presence. We stood and observed, bewitched, transfixed, speechless, camera lenses clicking like castanets, for fully an hour as, barely two metres away, baby gorilla fed from buxom mum. Two juvenile gorillas took turns to piggy-back one another, and daddy silverback gorilla, once he hove fully into view, and way, way bigger than you would ever imagine, just sat imperiously on a bed of shoots and foliage, eating, scratching and farting in an uncannily alpha male kind of a way. It was oddly familiar. I felt quite at home.
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