That’s the real question when you come to East Africa!

Before my trip I really really REALLY wanted to go to Uganda or Rwanda to go see the mountains gorillas but sometime last year the one day park entrance permit in Rwanda went up to $1500 for the one day park entrance permit!!! In Uganda it remained $600, which for me is A LOT of money!

So, I had already made up my mind that I could live a happy and fulfilling life without going Gorilla tracking when in East Africa but somehow God sent me a messenger! haha

I met Simone in Rwanda and she shared that she had just gone to DRC and saw them for $200! Whaaaat? I immediately looked it up because that was still in my budget but the more I looked the more expensive it became since I needed a DRC visa for $105 and a 2-week processing time, transportation to the park $100, re-entry visa for East Africa for $100, plus accommodation so it came down to at least $550 and a lot of trouble getting in and out of DRC. I was a little disappointed to be honest but the $500 price tag didn’t look as bad as the $1500 entry fee only for gorillas in Rwanda.

I did a little bit more digging, this time looking at the prices in Uganda and it turned out that for the month of November the park entrance fee goes from $600 to $450 due to the rainy season! I immediately got excited again! I started looking up gorilla tracking in all my Facebook traveling groups and googleing: gorilla + Uganda + backpacking + solo + ………..
then I remembered that before I left for my trip I had found a backpacker place in Bwindi National Park that could be affordable for me to do it on my own. After much googling I finally found the backpacker place inside the park and sent them an email to inquire about all the prices for the gorilla tracking, accommodation, and transportation.

The whole process with the place I could afford was super painful! The owner took forever to respond and when he did he maybe answered one of my five questions. At one point I had to send him a separate email just saying to please answer my previous email! I know this is Africa and all but if you are running a business for foreigners you should have a customer service that meets those standards. And also, I sometimes get a little impatient so waiting 24 hours for an email drives me crazy!

Long story short… After 3 days of barely emails and whatsapp  messages I ended up going with them: Park fee was indeed $450, a dorm was $15/night, and transportation from Kabale to the lodge was $25, making a total of $505! A third the park permit of Rwanda!

The day before my trek I was picked up in Lake Bunyonyi and for the first time in my time in Africa the pick up guy was early… 2 hours early! which was annoying because 1. I wasn’t ready, 2. I had texted the guy from the lodge to give me a one hour heads up before pick up to make sure I was back at the lodge. Well, the pick up was early but that meant I was in the car for more than an hour running errands with the guy who picked me up. We finally got to Kabale town and picked up the three other guests that I shared the ride with: Jasmin from Germany, and Silke and Nick from Luxembourg, and headed to the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.

The drive to the Bwindi Backpackers was beautiful! I was impressed by how every kid we saw stopped and waved! They see tourists every day but still all stopped and waved, many even danced! haha

There really isn’t public transportation to go up to Bwindi but there are a lot of people living in nearby villages so big trucks come and pick up people. The trucks get as full as matatus in Tanzania and is super scary to see.

Once at the backpackers we were asked to sit down and wait for Seith, the owner. It took forever for Seith to come so I asked to be shown the  menu for the restaurant as the website said there were dishes from 3,000USh ($0.80) to 12,000USh ($3.50) but such menu was non existent and there was only the option of a $10 set menu. 

After a long time Seith finally appeared and gave us a briefing for the Gorilla tracking and he started by saying “Only rich people like you get to do this” and I could hardly believe he had just said that. He actually sees his guests as USDollars and that’s it! I know that all of his guests have more money than the average Ugandan but that comment really rubbed me the wrong way. As we kept talking to him the other 3 people realized that they were never told that there was a transportation fee despite of asking for all the costs (of course Seith skipped answering some questions) and then Seith charged them $25, less than what he quoted and had already charged me. I of course complained and asked him for my money back and it was then that the couple of bad reviews on Trip Advisor started to make sense, most of them referring to Seith character. 

During the briefing he emphasized that the next day we needed to be on time in order not to miss the briefing at the park so we would need to have breakfast at 6:10am and leave at 7am to the park.

Before 6:10am I was ready and went up to the dinning area and it was closed so I asked the people in the kitchen to open it for us. It wasn’t until 6:35am that the waiter came and asked us what eggs we would like for breakfast and got our food 10-15minutes later. Of course we couldn’t finish breakfast before the 7am departure and the packed lunch for the group wasn’t even ready by then. At 7:05am an old guy who was always sitting at the dinning room said “You are leaving in 3minutes” and I just looked at him and said “We just got breakfast and we are still waiting for the lunches and have to brush our teeth”… It was so annoying! We waited more than 30 minutes to get our breakfast and then he wanted us to hurry!

At 7:15am we left for the park and we didn’t know it would take almost 45minutes to get to the park and do the registration. The driver even made a comment about us being late… like it was our fault!

We finally arrived at the park and we seated by 8:03am… we made it! We then waited longer for the briefing to start and finally a ranger came and talked about our day tracking with the gorillas.

Bwindi Impenetrable forest is one of the two places in the world where mountain gorillas are found in the wild (the other one being Virunga National Park in Uganda, Rwanda, and DRC.) He mentioned that Bwindi has 400 out of the 880 mountain Gorillas remaining in the world and from the census in 2011 the gorilla population is increasing. He mentioned that one of the families in Bwindi just welcomed a new baby gorilla 3 days ago!

Bwindi Forest is a UNESCO protected area, it has many kids of birds, animals, and plants that are found only in this forest.

The entrance fee for a one day hike is $450 (in november) but finding the gorillas is not guaranteed!!! If people don’t get to see them the park reimburses 50% of the fee but you have to go through a long process in Kampala. Also, people who are sick (TB, pneumonia, a cold) are not allowed to enter since the gorillas can get easily sick and put them in danger.

In order to make the tracking job easier for us, rangers wait until 3pm in the forest and see where the gorillas are at that time so they know more or less the area where they spent the night. Gorillas do not move during the night so at 7am the rangers are back in the park tracking them and use radios to communicate with the guides so we can find them.

After the briefing we got separated into Gorilla families and some of us had to take cars to the beginning of our hike. Four cars headed in our direction and drove for 30 minutes. Then the cars stopped and our guide got out to talk to the vehicles. To our surprise all the cars kept going but after talking to our driver we were asked to get out and walk. Wait! What? Why? Half our group is going up the hill.

Well, it turned out that our driver said he wouldn’t drive us up the hill! So annoying! We were the only ones with no transportation to the top and had to walk 35 minutes up the hill to meet up with half of our group and start the official hike! (it would have taken 3 minutes to drive!)

It was super annoying, we had paid the fee to take us to the beginning of the hike but we had to walk. The worst part is that it started raining! I was so annoyed!

We finally reached the other car and where half of our group was and we officially started the hike at 10am.

The beginning was really easy walking through a well marked path but the more we walked the more we really really got inside the forest. The path started to get muddier and the vegetation a lot more! The worst part was that it was raining, it drizzled the whole time, making the path even harder to walk on.

I knew there was a chance of rain since it’s (kind of) the rainy season but the group the day before got zero rain so I was hopefully, plus I had been praying for a week to not get rain “when I am seeing the gorillas”!!!

Thirty to forty minutes after we started our hike the guide stopped and asked us about the pace and shared that the rangers had found the gorillas already and if we kept the same pace we would be able to reach them in about two hours. 

We kept walking and the path got harder and harder, it was very very wet, muddy, and slippery! It really took away the enjoyment of walking through the forest, I hardly got to see the scenery because they were fast and I also needed to pay attention to where I was walking since I tend to be very clumsy when it comes to hiking and walking in non flat terrain.

Since I was the last person I took time to look up and take a look at where we were walking and snap a couple of pictures. The forest was unbelievable but all the fog didn’t allow for us to see much of the beautiful scenery around us. The deeper we were the harder it got to walk, to the point that I started slipping and falling on my butt! At first it was a little embarrassing but then the guide behind me took a big plunge, I felt better. On fall number 7 I just stopped counting and embracing all the falling! There was nothing I could do about it and everybody fell!

After an hour and a half we found the rangers who had said that the Gorillas had walked towards us and we were ready to see them. Miraculously the drizzled, the mist, and everything else stopped! We all put our walking sticks away, got our cameras ready and walked through the forrest behind the rangers cutting branches with a machete for us to be able to follow the gorillas.

The first one we saw was the silverback!!! It was SOOO EXCITING!!! My first glance at it was actually him tuning around and showing his silver fur!

These animals are unreal, they look so much like us and the silverback was majestic! 

The following hour was spent following the silverback around and finding so many more gorillas on the way.

 The first 10-15 minutes watching them was a little annoying since the silverback was behind some leaves and then one girl in the group set herself in front of it so many of us couldn't see. It wasn't until the silverback started moving that we were able to go to the front and see the gorilla.

Our family had 24 members, many of them young ones so it was fun to find them up on trees, or climbing, or my favorite… resting by their mommy’s chest!

After some time I finally found a perfect spot where I could see both a mommy and a baby to my right and the silverback to my left!

Now look at that mighty silverback!

Then the silverback kept moving, this time being followed by 3 young gorillas who were just adorable!

After the hour we started to walk back and guess what? It started POURING! The rain coming down was no longer a drizzle, it was full on rain coming down on us!

My rain jacket was wet, my hoodie underneath was wet, my shirt was wet, my pants were falling from the weight of all the water, my feet were swimming in my shoes! It was horrible, but it was worth it! The best part was that for the whole hour it didn't rain. If it did, gorillas would have gone under trees and branches to protect themselves from the rain and we couldn't have gotten our cameras out!

We walked for 2 1/2 hours back to where the car dropped us off and we were soaked! We were not only wet but super super cold! The drive back to the lodge seemed like forever and all we could think of was a hot shower!!!!

When we finally arrived to the lodge we found out that there was no hot shower... I took a super quick barely luke warm shower and called it a day! I couldn't be bothered to change and wait 1-2 hours for the water to warm up. Instead I did some washing as my clothes were so brown and they would stain. The amount of mud that came out of my socks was unbelievable!

That night we saw Seith and complained about the breakfast being super late and about the drop off. Instead of being open to our complaints he proceeded to make up excuses and argue with us. For breakfast he said that they were given us the "African experience" about things being late all the time! I was like WTF?!?! didn't he insist on us being early because he couldn't be late for the briefing? Then I said that one of the men told us we were leaving in 3 minutes while we were still eating and the lunches weren't even ready. He always had an excuse and attitude about it. At one point I stopped listening to him and Jasmin said to him that we were just sharing our experience with him.

We also mentioned about being dropped off at the bottom of the hill while everybody else was driven up to the starting point of the hike and that we had paid a fee to be taken to start of the hike. Instead of apologizing (for having a shitty car and driver) he started telling us that we were young and fit and that we could walk up the hill! He was missing the point, I even said: "What if my mother was in the car? Would he have taken us?"  the answer would have been no because the car he provides for transportation is not good enough.

I rolled my eyes and then stopped interacting with him as there was no way of getting through him and making him understand what our point was. Our one hour dinner was him pretty much talking to us, it was so annoying! This men can talk non stop and didn't get a clue that we were not interested in listening to his non sense! I couldn't wait to leave his lodge!

The following morning after breakfast we left the lodge and drove back to Kabale. And guess what? That day it did not rain! Lucky us getting soaked while doing our gorilla tracking!