I think  "Bwindi Impenetrable Forest" is my favorite park name in the world -- the most evocative of adventure.  It lived up to its name and feeling for us with our gorilla trek.  We visited to seek gorillas, of course, and had an amazing time. We chose to trek from Buhoma and were assigned to the Mubare group, which has one of the 3 biggest silverbacks in the forest.  At around 195 kg, he is very impressive and looks even bigger in person.  We hiked about two hours to reach our gorilla group. We started on a trail up one steep ridge past some farms and eventually diving into the forest full of very tall trees. The last part of the hike we had to leave any trail and the rangers were hacking through the thick (and thorny) underbrush with machetes to make a trail for us. The total hike was probably about two hours to reach the gorillas.  Our group included the big silverback and 3 mother-baby pairs. As they were all pretty well-secreted in the bush, the rangers had to pull back vines in order for us to see them, and we also got much closer than the usual 7 meters in order to see them in the undergrowth.  Our hour with them passed very quickly, but, as a treat, just before our time was up, we got to witness the silverback mating with one of the females.  We were just astounded that this happened while we were there.  After our hour was up, our rangers cut a different path back to the established trails, and we had a nice picnic lunch before continuing back down to the waiting cars.  I was pleased with our pretty vigorous hike through the impenetrable forest as it added to the sense of adventure.

On our drive to Buhoma the previous day from Lake Bunyonyi, we'd actually driven through a fair amount of the forest and gotten some great vistas of its mountains.  We drove past the Ruhija gorilla trekking starting point.  We did see a few animals like baboons and the fairly large black and white colobus monkeys while driving through the forest.

 

Yes, it's very expensive. $600 when I went, and set to increase.  But after being with the gorillas in the wild, I think it was definitely worth it for the unique experience. I got the impression that Uganda and Rwanda are doing the right thing for conservation of these impressive animals.