I’ve had so many pings for pictures, I thought I would get a few of the pictures out first and then add the more comprehensive blog posts later this weekend.

I Didn’t Want to Violate the No Closer Than 7m Rule — They Came To Me!

They have a “no closer than 7 meters” rule, but they also have a “don’t move if they approach you, unless the Ranger says to” rule.  I chose to obey the latter.  So I stayed and they approached.  You can only see one in this picture; I am hoping others got a better shot (this was taken by the Ranger with my camera).  Estimate from the scene was 7-8 feet away from the closer one, and the second one was about 5-6 feet away from the first.

I’m not sure I can get down from here

This is one of the two silver backs we saw.  He’s checking out the surroundings.  I’m sure he knows we’re there, but he spent a fair amount of time with his back turned to us.  We finally moved around to see his face and he took off. He seemed to me to be sitting there on guard duty, but it is far too easy to ascribe human motives and emotions to them.

This is one of the youngsters, although it is hard to get a sense of size.  Consider, however, the diameter of the tree.  We saw many instances of the gorillas going up trees that were just not quite big enough, resulting in a downed tree.  I think this might be like elephants knocking down trees to get to the nice tender leaves at the top. The also seemed to enjoy riding the tree down; I didn’t get a picture of that.  One rode the tree down and tumbled a bit further down the hill All this viewing took place on the side of the mountain, making footing an interesting problem.