Woke during the night to the sound of voices close by – our friends were huddled around the fire and lying under the truck chatting. It rained all night, and I woke again to water falling on the truck canvas and a dismally damp start to gorilla day. We pitched the cook tent over the fire and attempted to get things going.
After breakfast, we drove to the sanctuary, arriving during a break in the rain. The heavens opened again as we gathered with our guides and track slashers, but conditions eased again as our guides led us into the jungle. Following a trail of lowland mountain gorilla dung, and areas of flattened undergrowth where the animals had slept/nested overnight, they led us along a narrow, overgrown path of mud, roots, and moss-covered fallen logs, cleared where needed by our machete men. Gripping vines and trees to prevent falls, we dropped steeply down a slippery track into a gully, from the soggy bottom of which we had to claw our way steeply up a mud slide, each of us lessening the footholds for the people behind. We reached the top dirtier but with dignity still intact.
Suddenly we were among the gorillas. Immature apes moved away from us, joining three mature females in the safety of nearby treetops, but the slashers cleared enough green foliage to reveal the massive black head and torso of a huge silver back about 3m in front of us. I was surprised by the size and bulk and presence of this magnificent male, who sat there quietly, aware of us but showing no signs of aggression or distress at our proximity and relative noisy whispered comments. Only occasionally looking at us, he reached up with huge muscular arms to pull down branches and strip them of great wads of leaves that he stuffed into his mouth with super dextrous, black-skinned hands with thick fingers and delicate fingernails. Twice he strained up, his head back and forehead lined with concentration, listening to something none of us had picked up.
We stood in his presence for what seemed like ages, but was probably only fifteen minutes, before he rose and moved away, revealing the beautiful silvering down his back and the frightening width of his shoulders and back as he knuckle-walked way into dappled sunshine.
We were reluctant to leave when the signal from an approaching group prompted the “time” all. Could have stood, peering through the trees for much longer, but we had to share these animals with others. Our route back was quicker and easier although we had to wade through a creek. Huge rolls of elephant dung gave credence to the guards' warnings about the park's aggressive elephants - they carried thunder flashes to deter any attack. Before we set off, the guides had warned us that if a gorilla or an elephant charged us we should stand our grand becuase it was usually bluff. On our return we learned that just the week before, a gorilla had charged a group of travellers and the guides had fled, leaving their charges standing still as told. (Only pride was hurt.)
Back at the truck we flooded Kel and Nikki with descriptions of our encounter, even though they had seen it before.
I sat in the crows' nest for the drive down the mountain to a water stop where Nikki gave one of the locals half her avocado – coals to Newcastle – at a collection of huts surrounded by fruit-covered avocado trees. Stanley was instantly the centre of attention for avocado hawkers.
Stopped for lunch beside Lake Kivu, where a few of us braved the waters for a much-needed wash (despite my father's repeated warnings before I left home about the dangers of contracting bilharzia in freshwater infested with snails contaminated with parisitic blood flukes called schistosoma) . Clothes drying on the grass, we watched a black storm career towards us, blocking our view of the land on the far side of the lake and forcing us to gather our lunch things and take shelter in the back of the truck, just in time for the wind to whip the lake surface into white caps and a thunderstorm to erupt over us. Wind and rain battered the truck as we ate.
Back in Bukavu, Vicki and I found cheap Pakistani jam for scones. I bought Kellogg’s corn flakes with my last Zaires and read about gorillas and chimpanzees while we waited for Kelvin to collect our Burundi visas.
The drive out of town took us through the real Bukavu: a hilly slum area where the mud houses looked as if they might all slide down the slippery slopes. The road, if you could call it that, was a quagmire of red mud, lined with markets and stalls and taxi stops, with people squelching their way about their business, their feet bare and caked in slime or wearing plastic sandals on which the mud built up like platform shoes.
We proceeded slowly through the mud, followed by a rabble of boys and the odd girl, who slipped and slid as they raced each other to keep up with us, feet flapping. Skidding but never losing their footing, they followed us for some distance as we continued downhill, sliding badly through the thick mud, everyone on board groaning in anticipation of our final chance to mud mat in Zaire. Somehow, though, Stanley got us out of town without getting bogged. But worse was to come, with Kel weaving past several trucks stopped on each side of the road, Stanley's back end slewing left and right, mud building up on our tyres. With the sides rolled up we had uninterrupted views of where we were headed and what we’d made it through. The villages often left the soft verges to walk in the more solid tyre tracks we left behind us.
Finally on more solid ground, we had great fun play acting with the passengers crammed into a van behind us: they pretended to take photos of us with their cigarette packets in imitation of us with our cameras, and we bid each other farewell with waves, thumbs up and blown kisses.
Pulled off the road to camp on a track heading through a plantation, sharing the spot with an English couple and monkey travelling in a combi van. We pitched our tents among the trees and built our fire on a pathway.
Villages helped us collect wood, doing Jim's job for him. Kel replayed his skull-mask trick and a snake chased Geoff through the length of the camp, the locals scattering in fear at his passage, before overcoming their fear enough to crowd around him and investigate the plastic serpent.
Vicki and I are both a bit sad that tomorrow will be our last day in Zaire. The adventures, drama, scenery, colours, sounds and mostly wonderful people have made us both very fond of this incredible country
The truck was soon thronging and humming with mosquitoes, and the fear of catching malaria forced me off the truck to sleep in a more protective tent.
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