(Continued from yesterday.)
So we go hunched over through one more tunnel of vines and branches, and then the guide stops us with a raised hand. There are two gorillas sitting with their backs to us: a medium sized jet black one and a frighteningly large silverback.
The silverback of the group is the chief: he gets all conjugal visits, he keeps all the other gorillas in line, and, when humans come to visit, he is undoubtedly the star of the show. I think I expected the silver in his fur to be more striking, like a long tuft running up his spine. But it's actually just a graying around his lower back, right around his love handles.
Love handles fit for a king. Silverback has one long line of flab almost encircling his body (it disappeared in the small of his back. If you ever have love handles in the small of your back, you are likely an immobile Fatty McGee.), but he carried his girth at least as well as Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
We sit and stare at the twenty or so gorillas for an hour. They are a pretty lethargic bunch, and they do a million tiny human things which are fascinating but will not sound fascinating when blogged. There were two threats of violence though, which translates nicely: First, Silverback charges at us. We'd been cautioned on the way up that, if a gorilla charges, you need to crouch down and hold your ground. When it actually happens, we all take a step back, then regain our nerve and do what we're supposed to. Silverback stops two steps before he got to us, then turns his back no us and walks back.
Ten minutes after that, apropos of nothing, Silverback rears up, his flab taut against his barrel chest, and he pounds on his rib cage and bares his teeth. This guy has incisors like exacto-knives. We're all sure he's about to open a can of Gorilla-bran whoop ass on us, but instead he just knuckle-walks his way up the hill out of sight.
And then it's been an hour, and, by eco-tourism rules, it is therefore time to go. Hiking down is like ice skating in a crapstorm: everybody is falling face first, slipping flat on their back, having their boots sucked off in the mud. Out to Hobbitton, across miles of road to 2WD my taxi, and we weave our way back through the hills toward Kigali, with the biggest, whitest moon I'd ever seen hanging just over the hilltops. The man in the moon was completely horizontal. Is that normal, or does it just happen in creepy Rwanda?
