Back at Bunyiani

God, I'm choking. In a literary way, that is. I have so much to say, I really don't know where to start. It's all good, but it's all so, so interesting. Sitting in my tent again, and yes, it's twenty to two in the morning. It's been a fairly long day. Gorillas first, I guess...

So I had a darned good night's sleep. After sorting out breakfast, and dumping our spare stuff in the minibuses, we headed the fifty metres down to the 'gorilla office'. They collected passports and permits, then we split into the families we'd been allotted. I and three of the others in our group were heading to see the 'Mubari' family, along with an older american couple, and a pair of american girls who were both working in East Africa. Mubari family, our guide – John – tells us, is the family that's been habituated the longest. The rest of our truck were allocated to other families. After a quick talk from the guide, we grabbed a lift with the american girls, and drove the ten minutes to start our walk. It's quite an efficient operation. The gorillas are viewed practically every day, but for strictly one hour at a time. They mark the gps position every day, then trackers head up early in the morning to pick up the trail at the last marked position. This means they can practically guarantee seeing the gorillas. For permits at 500USD, I should bloody well hope so!

So the first hour of our hike was up through banana plantations. There were the usual small children to wave at, and the sun and humidity meant we were soon sweating heavily. We rested often. One of the american girls was overweight, and struggled a little. The older american couple were slow but steady. They'd elected to hire porters at ten dollars a day, and this proved to be a fine decision for them, as the porters were often pushing and pulling them as well as carrying their bags. At one point, we found some children picking peanuts. Someone asked if the gorillas ate peanuts, to which I replied, 'Well, if you're paying peanuts,, you're only really likely to get monkeys.'

(Dave, of course, then said, 'I said that to a colleague a while ago....'. Of course you f**king well did, didn't you. I must confess he's driving me nuts – no pun intended. More on him later, anyway.)

As we reached the top of the plantations, the going became steep. We'd been given walking sticks at the base camp, and these proved nigh-on essential. We found ourselves in fairly dense undergrowth, but made steady progress. We heard regular bleeps from the guide's radio, and we had guys with AK-47s fore and aft.

After nearly two hours of hiking, the guide called a halt. We'd found the gorillas. The guide told us to drop all our bags and sticks, taking only cameras and other 'essential' items. The guide told us our hour would start when we see the gorillas. It was another ten-minute hike down into a densely-green valley, into which the trackers had hacked a trail with machetes. This was hard going without the sticks, and several times, I almost slid away.

I must confess, I wasn't that excited about seeing the gorillas. Everyone talks about it as a once-in-a-lifetime experience and, of course, it probably is, but as is often the case, I found it difficult to believe it would live up to the hype. Nevertheless, I was picking my way across a particularly thorny root, when I looked up and saw my first gorilla. I have to admit I said, 'Wow!', albeit sotto voce. I don't really know how to describe them, physically. We were about six metres away at this point, and it didn't look particularly big from this distance. We stood and watched. And took pictures. Lots of pictures. There was another round of urgent whispers, and as I looked up the valley, I saw the resident Silverback. This guy was huge. The male gorillas develop the distinct grey-silver fur when they're about fourteen, and at this stage they will often challenge the dominant male for the group. If the challenge is sufficiently strong, the group may then split, with the young pretender taking some of the females. This group was small – eight gorillas, with three females, and some juveniles. As we looked up the valley, we could see various patches of undergrowth rustling. Our guide cleared his throat occasionally to signal, 'We're coming, we're friendly.'

After ten minutes, the Silverback moved off along the valley, with the others following. I watched the male. His movements were so human: at one point, he plucked some leaves from a branch, looked at them with curiosity, sniffed them, then casually threw them over his shoulder, before grabbing another, better handful. After twenty minutes, the family seemed to gather at the bottom of the valley, where the male promptly went to sleep, and the baby – who'd been clinging to the back of another juvenile – decided to put on a show. He spent half an hour continuously clambering onto the back of the juvenile, standing up, then falling off. A true clown.

After an hour, our time was up. It rained briefly, and it seemed appropriate to leave the family in peace. The trek down was actually harder than the trek up, and Leigh spent most of it clinging to my hand and using me as a support – my Inca-Trail-eating Scarpa boots finally justifying their inclusion in my rucksack. As we reached the banana plantation, we passed two groups of children, who'd laid out crafts as well as a few crayon pictures of gorillas for our perusal. You have to hand it to them, they're very enterprising – and they know every trick in the book. One of the American girls bought two pictures, because they'd each been done by one of the two children. Turning them over later, they had the same name on the back of each. Nice angle, well worked, kids.

One of the American girls gave me her phone number. She lives in Kampala, and we said it'd be good to catch up for beers, since we're going to be back there in two days. Leigh is adamant she's 'after' me, although I must confess I genuinely thought I was merely taking the number 'on behalf of the truck'. We shall see, anyway, Hopefully, I won't have to extricate myself from any sticky situations.

I shan't say too much else about the day, save that Owen – our hard-hiking-man-mountain-outdoorsman Canadian – was a little hacked off that his group of gorillas was a leisurely fifteen-minute stroll from the camp. After they'd come back from their hour, he actually strolled back again for another look – until man-with-assault-rifle 'suggested' he should go back to the camp.

So, a five-hour drive back to Bunyiani, a few beers, and bed now. There's a lot of group politics in the air, and I must talk more about them. It's fascinating – very 'Big Brother', actually ('day six on the Oases truck, and Nick comes to the diary room') That can probably wait until the morning, though.