Gorillas in the mist

Yesterday we had a long dusty overland journey through southwestern Uganda, a border crossing into Rwanda and then a climb up into the mountainous area of Ruhengari. Today was our Gorilla trek. We started from our campsite at 0600 and went to the park headquarters for an orientation. Then we did a 40 minute drive up higher to the trailhead. The trek in to the Gorillas took about 1.5 hours and was a fairly steep climb. The trails are very good and I hired a porter to carry the pack with my RED (best 10 bucks I ever spent:<). The weather was perfect, clear skies and pleasantly cool temperatures. We had a fantastic encounter with the Gorillas. They were in a relatively open. There was a large Silverback male, a couple large Blackback males a couple females and one cute fuzzy little baby. We were really close to the Gorillas, usually less than 10 feet. They went about their Gorilla business as though we weren't even there.