Gorillas in Rwanda

Just had an amazing experience in the Rwanda jungle, getting up close to a group of 19 gorillas. We spent around 75 minutes with them.

The larger ones are incredibly powerful.

You have to trek in and up the mountain to the jungle to get to them, but we were lucky and had a group relatively close by.

You’re meant to stay 20 feet or so from them,but they often get very close to you.

The massive one with his back to me is Guhonda, who is the oldest and largest gorilla of all the groups in Rwanda. He is 44 years old. He may be the largest mountain gorilla in the world, weighing 225 kgs.

Guhonda sitting down.

This is Guhonda’s son, who will take over as alpha male from him. This photo is his strutting just after he decided to assert his dominance and charged towards our group, growling loudly. We’d been taught not to run, but just to crouch down which I did. Fair to say I was crapping myself, as this huge gorilla is charging towards me, and stopped less than a metre away. He then did his strutting, at which point we slowly backed away.

Some smaller ones.

These young ones were playfighting in the trees.

And this silverback was keeping an eye on us from the bush.

One of the many video clips I shot. Again you see how close they get.