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What a great day for me! We went on our first of two gorilla treks.
This time we went to go see the Habinyaja Group (H Group). There were 22 individuals in this group - 2 silverbacks, a couple of babies, and many females and youngsters. There are 650 Mountain Gorillas in the area (corner of Congo, Rwanda, & Uganda) - of this number 330 are in Bwindi National Park (where we are). We calculated that we saw 6.6% of the Uganda Mountain Gorilla Population and 3.3 percent of the total. That's crazy and sad that that was even possible. It took us a little over one hour to get to the gorillas - we walked through several small villages to get there. The kids were all very cute.
The walk was somewhat difficult, but not that bad. Once we got to the gorillas it was worth it. They are amazing creatures, and so larger than I had pictured. The silverback's head and hands were amazing! The babies were adorable to. It was funny to hear our guide make gorilla noises so that the group would know that we were "friendly." They looked at us a few times, but there were no problems. The hour passed by so quickly, and I was sad when we left, though exhilerated. We met some nice people on the trek - Enid & Stephen from Montreal and Joseph our guide.