Saturday, May 16, 2009

Happy Birthday Kaley! Today, I woke up at about 2 am since I've only been getting about 6 hrs of sleep per night. It ended up being lucky because just after I woke up it started to rain. It was so amazing! It was a complete downpour, unlike any rains we have at home. We needed to be outside at 6 to leave 6:20, and we woke up before the alarm so we were kind of moseying around starting to get ready when Cortney came and said everyone else was at breakfast. It took us a while, but we realized our alarm hadn't gone off and were late! We packed quickly and headed out. We arrived and split into our groups (the groups that had been in trucks) and learned about our gorilla families. We were visiting the Sabinyo family. It boasts the largest silverback in the world weighing between 220-250 kilos. WOW! In fact, our guide, Hope, described him as a 'hill' There was the silverback, six females, and three babies, one only nine months old. One of the females was pregnant. We drove quite a ways to our drop site, about a half hour or forty minutes. At first the roads were good, but our last road was VERY bumpy. We drove through a little village, so we got to see all the people out and about. We walked about twenty minutes to get into the park and about 25 minutes once we were in. Our guide was always making jokes and after we climbed a hill just inside the park the trackers were at the top! He told us they were just meeting us and we still had 2-4 hours to hike, but we knew better! We dropped our bags and our sticks and headed out of the clearing. We first caught site of the silverback! He was HUGE. He moved and we watched the mom with a young baby before they realized they were crossing out of the park. So we made our way back over the wall to meet them. It was so cool! They were all spread out and we were actually walking between them! They were feasting on bark the whole time. We never actually got charged, but I was scared a couple times when the females were 'playing'. Our silverback's name was Guhonda, which means 'beats on chest'. We saw that a couple times! After our super-short hour we headed back. On the way up there had been some kids with drawings and colorings of the gorillas and we decided we would buy some on the way back. When we came out we saw them, but everytime Hope came over they ran away. He told us not to buy anything because then they rely on that as an income and chose not to go to school. It was heartbreaking, they followed us all the way down the hill! After we did our graduation ceremony we headed into town for lunch. We thought the other group was done, but we ate and sat there for two hours before they got there! They wanted the group to stay together so we decided to walk around town. It was such a great experience! We walked from the hotel to downtown. When we were about halfway there we realized it would rain soon, but no one was running yet so we figured we had some time. We reached a shop just in time and bought some very cool stuff. Then we decided to brave the rain...as if we didn't stand out enough, being the only people on the street REALLY made us obvious! When we got to the end of the block we had to cross a little river of water. We assessed the situation and eventually jumped across. As soon as we got over there were a bunch of guys clapping for us! It was pretty funny. We had a great walk around, we even stopped to buy a Fanta. While we were there trying to deal with the language barrier and finish it because you can't leave with the bottle, we drew a crowd of over 20 people. It was so funny. We headed back on our long walk to the hotel, met up with Guillaume and got on our way to Rubavu (Gisenyi). When we arrived at Paradise Nakeesha and I sat out on the grass by the lake. Then when we came to supper they had Intore dancers! It was so cool! We had our supper by the fire and had a good night's sleep.