Searching for mountain gorillas in Uganda

“THEY say you have to be seven metres away from the gorillas. They kept coming up to us, and there’s nowhere to step back because the jungle is so thick.”

Me? Hit you with a tree? Couldn’t be. I’m a vision of innocence.

“THEY say you have to be seven metres away from the gorillas, but yeah. They kept coming up to us, and there’s nowhere to step back because the jungle is so thick.”

Rosie Richardson has just returned to Australia from Uganda, where she got up close and personal to mountain gorillas in the wild. “I mean, they probably weigh 250 kilograms, and one brushed right past my leg. We were terrified when they got up and walked toward us, that’s really scary, but the trackers explained they’re not dangerous, and they told us just to stay really still.” She filmed the entire encounter, posting her adventure on YouTube. “They’re just so like us. We knew that before we left, but it’s amazing how they interact with each other. They’re just eating leaves and then pushing over their brother. A big silverback male saw us, and he was looking around for his children and protecting them.” The gorillas are extremely placid, but getting close is not without risks. “They’re not dangerous, that’s the interesting thing. We saw some chimpanzees, they work themselves into a frenzy and that’s really scary. The guards did have guns, they carry AK-47s, but they never shoot the gorillas. They shoot up in the air to scare them away. No-one’s ever been harmed, no tourists have been hurt. “What was going through my mind was how lucky we were to see them up close, because there’s only 800 left in the wild. It’s so expensive to get there, to Uganda, and to get a permit and trek up the bloody mountain. It’s almost a relief to see them, after all the nervous energy you build up during the week.” Rosie, who works as the director of Mosaic Travel, is based at Geelong in Victoria. She flew from Melbourne to Doha and on to Entebbe, on the shores of Lake Victoria. Uganda is in central Africa, bordering Kenya, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Tanzania. Getting there isn’t cheap, and the gorilla permit alone costs about $1000. “They only allow really limited numbers, so in Uganda it’s just 24 people a day. There’s three families living in this stretch of jungle. “They do it really well. They say it’s put back into conservation, and before I went I thought ‘Oh yeah, as if’. But when I went there, that really seems to be the case. The locals do such good work to look after them and create awareness, and to stop poaching and pollution from local villages and things.” She says trekking through the jungle was no mean feat. “Do some training, because you need to be very fit. You might have to walk up to eight hours to find them,” she told news.com.au. “It was really tough. I’m really fit and I found it tough because it’s so steep. It’s muddy and it’s humid, and it’s thick jungle. The guide and the trackers had machetes and they’re hacking back branches to let us through. It’s a lot harder than I thought. As we were climbing up, there’s no track. We were literally just bush-bashing. “I don’t know how long these gorillas will be around, so to be able to see them in the wild is such a privilege. Having been to Africa before, I think just to be able to sit down in their natural habitat and watch these beautiful creatures in the wild is phenomenal.”