Note: The once idyllic part of Zaire that I wrote about after our visit 50 years ago is today a scene of horror. Thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced as a rebel group seizes Congolese territory. The group, which Kinshasa says is backed by Rwanda, has captured both Bukavu and Goma.
April 23, 1975: “Our spring vacation was a marvelous experience. It came in two parts. The first was an organized tour, something we’ve avoided before, but which proved invaluable for seeing the things we wished to see. In the second part, we struck out on our own.
“There were eight of us on the tour, all teachers from the American school. We began with a plane flight in the wee hours from Kinshasa to Bukavu, which map lovers will find at the southern tip of Lake Kivu, in eastern Zaire. Bukavu (International!) Airport consists of a very short landing strip (upon which our 737 made a very hair-raising landing) and a very small and dilapidated metal shed. We were picked up at the airport and squired to a nice hotel in Bukavu, which is beautifully situated on a peninsula jetting out into Lake Kivu, a lovely lake surrounded by hills and mountains.
“Just as we got off the plane, the cooler and dryer air struck us. Kinshasa is muggy and oppressively hot. The Kivu area was cool and pleasant. We drove through tea, coffee and quinine fields to the city, noticing how much of the area is cultivated, another contrast to the Kinshasa, whose surrounding soil is poor, and crops are scarce.
“After an excellent two-hour Belgian-cuisine dinner and a good rest, we set out for one of our most exciting adventures — gorilla trekking. The car took us about 30 miles out of Bukavu to the Kahuzi-Biega National Park. At the entrance, we set off with guides and porters for what was in itself a fascinating and singular experience — a three-hour walk through deep rain forest. We followed the guides who hacked out paths with machetes. They in turn followed the sometimes barely perceptible trail of the gorillas, which they enlarged for us humans. Mike, who had done some reading in preparation, was able to spot additional signs of the gorillas — stripped-off bark, which they had eaten, and circular nests, plus newer- and newer- looking piles of gorilla dung. Mike said some people searching for gorillas stick their fingers in these piles to see how warm they are. We declined.
“But our excitement became greater and greater as the piles looked ever fresher and we began getting into ever denser forest, crawling along for yards at a time, halting occasionally as the three guides in front consulted with one another about alternative routes. We were struggling uphill over some particularly slippery vines when we heard a roar. Such a roar! We stopped in our tracks. The guides ordered us to turn around. We backtracked for quite a distance, thinking the roar had scared the guides as much as it scared us, wondering if the guarantee that we would see gorillas could be interpreted to mean we’d only hear them, when suddenly the guides turned to us and motioned for silence. One of them pulled me by the arm and pointed, whispering, ‘Look at the black, the black area’ and there it was: A huge gorilla sitting in the forest, looking at us.
“We gradually moved closer to the gorilla, and the guides cut additional brush to improve the view. As we watched, the first gorilla slowly got up and walked away. The guides pointed off to the right, where movement showed a second and larger gorilla, who came and sat down where the first had been. We watched this gorilla, taking pictures and constantly exclaiming to each other (very quietly) how very huge he was. He watched us fairly intently and was, for the most part inactive. Occasionally, he performed a classic gorilla belly scratch, or picked up something from the ground. Toward the end of our 45-minute observation, he seemed to grow peevish, and stood up and ‘charged,’ frightening us with his growling and the immensity of his standing body. He half-heartedly charged a couple more times, sat back down, and then with a great lurch and a final volley of yelling at us, he sauntered off into the forest.
“We have talked with others who saw more gorillas, or who saw them in clearings with better visibility. I was awed by our experience. I found one gorilla at a time an eyeful, And I felt the rain forest the most suitable setting.
“On our departure, scheduling issues prevented us from taking a boat back across the lake, and forced us onto a DC-3 which was an experience in itself. From Goma airport, we headed north through more fertile countryside and lovely villages, traveling in the VW buses which were to be our transport for the next three days, in the Virunga National Park — a fantastic and most scenic place.
“For Mike and me this was the first game park, the first time we had had that quintessentially African experience, and we were far from disappointed. I think as a matter of fact that Virunga will be hard to beat. The physical setting for one thing was exactly to our taste: a huge bowl surrounded by mountains, with Lake Idi Amin reaching down into the park’s northern tip, backed by the snowy Ruwenzori range — Ptolemy’s Mountains of the Moon (the largest of which we hope to climb next Christmas). This magnificent setting is home to huge groups of elephants, gazelles, warthogs, antelope of several sorts, giant lizards, fish eagles and other great birds, and, to top it off, lions. Finally, Virunga has what must be the world largest hippo population. The park is spacious as well as beautiful and was uncrowded.
Note: I thought I should check out what I had written about the hippos, and I found these heart-breaking facts: “In the 1970s Virunga recorded the largest number of hippos in the world, with 29,000 individuals in and around Lake Edward. Since then, instability in the region has led to increased poaching and a 95% decline in the size of the population.” And this, from 2005, “A new aerial survey shows that the hippo population in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo will soon be extinct due to rampant poaching for hippo teeth and meat.”
“We lived in the small buildings (of a fake hut motif) that make up the park hotel. From here, our guide would tell us each day when we would go out. We would take an early morning (as in 5 a.m.) trip, a later morning trip and an afternoon trip. Each day we saw different animals. The first lion was perhaps the most striking experience, though huge groups of hippos, in the water, on the land, and stuck in the mud, were equally interesting. We went to a fishing village on the lake and ate wonderfully fresh grilled fish.”
The last half of our spring vacation would prove even more remarkable. Though, if we had known the volcano we were going to climb was considered one of the most dangerous in the world, we might have thought better of our plan.