Chris and Henry visit the gorillas

Visiting real gorillas in the wild is definitely a Top 5 all-time great experience.  

Let's get right to the pictures

I took those with my phone so you can imagine how close we were.  That little guy actually grabbed Henry's foot at one point.

The big guy is a silverback and is the leader of this gorilla family.  His name translates to "ladies man" because the family has 4 females and each has a baby.  

We sat with the gorillas for a little over an hour and watched the babies play and the adults hang out and mostly just eat.  

We hiked about 2 hours to reach this family. I'm not going to lie. The hike was hard. Really hard. The beginning was quite steep as we made our way up the mountain on a really slippery and skinny trail.  Then to actually reach the gorillas we had to go off-trail through the jungle with the guides hacking a path with machetes.  It was super slippery because of the ferns and vines and the steep slope.  But absolutely worth the hike.  

This is a picture of the on-trail portion of the trek.  The people in grey are porters who carry your stuff and help you from sliding down the side of the mountain. My fitbit recorded the hike as 54 flights of stairs.

We are now hanging out at the lodge and making use of the spa to try to revive our sore muscles.

Tomorrow, we have a second trek to visit a different family in a different part of the park.  We will post more pictures too.  Henry took a bunch of great pictures with his camera.