We took a trip to the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in Uganda to track a family of gorillas and visited with 19 of them. The silverback is the leader of the pack and we were told that he consumes as much as 150 kilograms of food per day. To minimize disruption to these creatures' behavior, humans are limited to just one hour per day with them.
In their presence, we couldn't help but feel so feeble. They own the forest and moved about with such ease, watching as we clumsily slipped on wet foliage and tripped over entangled roots. We giggled among ourselves at the imaginary scene of our epically close encounter where we would introduce ourselves, thumping our chests. Me, Pauline. You, Gorilla. But alas, our 60 minutes of gazing from a distance were up and we were urged to slip and slide our way back out again.
