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Intrepid Gorillas, Chapter Seven. The Gorillas of Rwanda
There are two very strict rules to adhere to when you trek into the gorillas.First, if you have as much as a cold,you are not welcome to go. Second, you are supposed to stay 7 meters awy from them. This second rule is impossible to follow, because these guys come right up to you. They are not afraid of humans anymore. The tourists arrive about the same time everyday and I honestly think that they regard us as some sort of a protecting force.

The babies like to look at themselves in the mud puddles as if to say “what do these humans see in us?”

My favorite picture out of 1200 I took on this safari. This is the senior female in the family. I have nicknamed her “Miss Rwanda”
Many more of my gorilla photos can be seen here.
I hope you enjoyed this post. Please tell a friend and share.
Intrepid Gorillas, Chapter Eight
Wait…what happened to chapter seven? Well folks, chapter 7 will be all about the actual visit to the gorillas. I am making you wait for it because I had to wait for it for such a long time. At least you are not bouncing around in a lumber truck. Do this math…16×24=384. 384 hours, most of them in less t han comfortable conditions for ONE hour with the gorillas. Yes, a once in a lifetime trip. Been there, done that and I have the t-shirt. You only have to read one more post to get the photos.

This was my view for a minimum of five hours a day, up to eleven. Imagine being on a long flight. Now imagine no toilet aboard the plane. Now imagine the seat being made by a masochist. Now imagine that for 80% of the flight you were in extreme turbulence. That is what truck touring in Africa is like.

This is Pesh our guide and mother for trip. She did an excellent job, as did all the Intrepid crew.
Intrepid Gorillas, Chapter Six

Real Life Experiences is the marketing tagline for Intrepid Travel. We had one about 45 miles inside Rwanda. Suddenly the truck was making horrible screeching noises accompanied by the smell of burning rubber. No one was more surprised than I was when they pulled a spare bushing out of the storage racks. John, the driver is a very competent man, and two hours later we were on the road.
Intrepid Gorillas, Chapter Five

Me. I have crossed the equator by air and on land more times than I can remember, but it is always an important moment. To me anyway. Here I am doing my “truckin” act.

The gang, sitting from left. Alex, Karen,John, Robin, Pesh, Juma.Standing from left..the smartest man in the world, Charlie, Daniela, Cassie, Casey and Juliet. In back hamming it up, me.

These might be my favorite birds in Africa. They are very colorful and have a great song. The males construct these hanging nests for their lifetime mates. If the female does not like it, she will not move in and the male must build a better one.

This bird is pretty special also. The African Water Eagle. He is quite the fisherman and beautiful to boot.
Now I always try to show bizzare restroom signs. Here are two I found near Lake Elizabeth
Intrepid Gorillas, Chapter Four
Intrepid Gorillas, Chapter Three

This is really good stuff. Amarula is a fruit in South Africa, favored by Elephants, and used as a flavor for this otherwise Baileys type of liqueur. It is a bit stronger at 16.5%, goes down deceptively smooth, and puts a nice end to a long trucking day.
Once again I thank Intrepid travel for helping cross-off an item I did not even know existed on my bucket list. Come to think about it, two items. Source of the Nile and a new booze.
Thanks for reading, share with a friend. Make a comment, please.
Intrepid Gorillas, Chapter Two

We were also treated to a little sex act by a couple lions. It is after all breading season and no truckload of gawkers is gonna stop the king of the jungle!
Lake Nakura National Park is also home to 420 species of magnificent birds. Scroll back in my blog posts to June of last year and find many photos of beautiful birds.
Here it is, from a year ago.
http://theothersideofthecoconut.com/2011/06/13/lake-nakuru-flamingos-hippos-and-baboons-oh-my/
This was a well thought out and informative day in the trip by Intrepid!
Stay tuned for more, including the source of the Nile and gorillas.
Tell a friend and share on Facebook! Asante san.
Intrepid Gorillas, Chapter One
A while back, Travel Bloogers Unite and Intrepid Travel announced a contest to go on a Safari in Africa to, among other things, trek into the jungle and see the Mountain Gorillas. These are the giant gentle critters that were brought to the world’s attention by Dian Fossey.
I entered the contest and somehow, maybe I was the only person who entered, I won.
This was a 16 day safari through Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and back. I had taken a wonderful safari exactly a year prior and I could not imagine that Africa had changed much, but I wanted to see the gorillas. So I accepted and signed on.
I must say that being I had won this trip and I was a guest of Intrepid Travel, I want to be nice. I want to be gracious. I’ll try, but this is after all an IRREVERENT TRAVEL BLOG. So I am going to tell it as I saw it. Please be aware this was my first and only experience with Intrepid, so pardon my ignorance.
First I want to deal with the name of the company INTREPID TRAVEL. Intrepid can be defined as audacious, brave, dauntless, and unfearing. Intrepid Travel is none of the above, except at times audacious. I’ll cover this audacious thing a few times in following posts. For now let me say that when I was young, I traveled in a much more intrepid manner. I went where I wanted, when I wanted to with no agenda except being sure I was back at University when classes started. When I set out I had a few destinations in mind, but transportation and lodging were all adhoc.
When you travel with Intrepid, every moment of every day is professionally planned out for you, using years of experience a a guideline. Where you are going, what you will eat, what you will see and where you will sleep are pre-ordained and as sacred as scripture to a Baptist. That is not really a complaint. It is very convenient for most people. Please remember, this was my first experience with Intrepid and I am certainly not too proud to say I am ignorant of the other thousand trips they offer.
The adventure started with the hotel Intrepid assigned us to upon our arrival in Nairobi. I will not say much about it except that I gave it the lowest level review possible on Tripadvisor. It felt great to vent my spleen there, I will resist doing it for my faithful readers here.
The group met for the first time on Sunday night before our Monday departure. We introduced ourselves to each other and ponied up the per-person US$1250 kitty. Very cute of Intrepid to call this a kitty. What it really is is the second half of the cost of the trip. You pay the first half when you register and that is nonrefundable. That was the part I won. The trip notes clearly stated that they would not accept anything other than US$, and only in currency minted after 2003. Well, one of my hundred dollar bills was minted in ’96, and I figured, they cannot be too serious. They were. They would not accept it. Nor, as it turns out would it pass muster anywhere in Kenya.
As the group started the self intros, “hi, my name is…” stuff, one guy immediately started in on what I would learn to be an incessant urge to prove he was the smartest person on the trip. He told us all that he had convened with the world’s leading authority on tropical diseases and that we should all be taking one of three malaria medicines. I have been in malaria regions enough to know that if you are paranoid, use a lot of deet.
The group went to have dinner together, in the hotel restaurant. People compared travel notes and expectations for our safari. When someone asked me why I was there I said that I had won the trip, and all I wanted to see were the gorillas. “What about the game drives, all the animals?’ someone asked. “Been there done that, bring on the gorillas” was my response.
The average age of people on Intrepid trips is 36. This trip was probably right in that neighborhood. The oldest was a 77 year old woman from New Zealand, who by the end of the safari I rated as the heartiest of the bunch.
We somehow got a good night’s sleep. The next morning we met at “the truck”. I was only half surprised, the trip notes DID say it was truck, not a bus,

Yup, this would be the center of my life for the next 16 days. A close inspection revels it is nothing more than a flat bed truck designed to carry a 40 foot shipping container. It had “specially designed” box built on it with storage for back packs and chairs to sit in. I spent about 90 hours in this damn thing on very poor African roads, swaying and bouncing and slamming against the windows like a rag doll in a washing machine. “Intrepid?”
Please do not be discouraged about reading the next chapters of this trip. In all, it was a wonderful experience, definitely outside my normal way of traveling, so any snide comments or cheap jokes I make are just me being irreverent. Intrepid is a very professional organization, and I thank them.
Please read on. When I take you with me into see the gorillas, you’ll know why you came, I sure did.