Spending Time With Mountain Gorillas

Spending 1 hour with the Mountain Gorillas in Uganda and/or Rwanda ranks as one of my most profound animal encounters.  Maybe it was the great effort and exertion it took to get to where they were located.  It was not like a game drive where you just sat in a vehicle and drove around until you found something.  I earned it by trekking through the rain, and mud, up the hills and into the valleys, through the vines, avoiding the nettles and biting ants. Thanks heavens for my porter who lugged all my water and camera gear and gave me a helping hand too!  

But the reward was so unique.  I found myself a few feet away from the King (and Queens) of the jungle.  In retrospect the best thing that could have happened was when I ran out of space on my camera memory chip and put the machine away and looked at the individual gorillas and their family group as a whole and not through the tiny view on the camera.  That was when I saw the tiny rain droplets on their fur and heard them chomping on their lunch of leaves and watched a young cheeky juvenile push another one of the hikers all while his mother watched in the distance.  WOW!