Rwanda: Another Ape Experience

  

Angolan Colobus Monkey
(like the other Colobus I saw,
but these ones have less white on the sides
of their bodies and more around the face)

Seeing gorillas in the wild was so incredible that it made me want to do it again! But $500 is a lot of money, and I was heading to Rwanda, so it would've been $750 there. So instead I enjoyed looking for monkeys and seeing all different kinds.

                    

Blue Monkey

Blue Monkey

L'Hoest Monkey

Vervet Monkeys
(they were moving a lot so it's a little blurry)

Then an opportunity came my way. I was heading to the Nyungwe Forest in the south-west of Rwanda. It has been rated the highest priority for forest conservation in all of Africa. It is home to over 1 000 plant species, 13 types of primates, 75 species of monkeys, 275 species of birds and 120 different types of butterflies! It, like Bwindi, has been deforested so locals can farm to make money. There are some banana plantations here, and lots of tea plantations.

Tea Plantation

One of the main attractions of Nyungwe forest is chimpanzee tracking. After all the work we did two years ago with the Jane Goodall Institute and Roots and Shoots, I was really excited about the idea of seeing them in the wild. Plus, Jane Goodall herself had just been to the forest in July! So I decided it would be worth it, and I paid the $90 to go.

I was warned that it could be as difficult as gorilla tracking, but it wasn't as bad. The forest was drier than Bwindi so the ground was more stable, there weren't as many thorny vines, and there was a bit of an actual path through the brush. Plus, I started at 5 am instead of 9 am, so it was much cooler out.

It was again a group of 8 tourists, plus the guide, and a few trackers. They head into the forest at 4 am to find the chimps where they left them sleeping, and followed them for the day. We were lucky: the chimpanzees were actually heading towards where we were starting to hike! So we only had to walk for 20 minutes or so before we were told to be very quiet.

Chimpanzees are much shier than gorillas (or more easily disturbed). Like gorillas there are habituated and non-habituated groups, but even the ones used to seeing people often run away, climb high in the trees, and turn their backs on people.

We came across a family of five first. We were able to watch them swing on branches and eat fruit. The coolest part was watching them walk on the thin branches mainly on two feet. They used their hands to steady themselves, but they looked so much like humans!

They turned away from us a lot and moved quickly, so it was hard to get a good picture.

You could hear other families of chimpanzees from the same group calling to each other with the famous "pant-hoot" call that we heard Jane Goodall do in the documentary. They would get excited and start shrieking back and forth and jumping up and down on the branches.

That family moved on after about a half-hour and we followed. We found another two chimpanzees in a tree, but they were hard to see. It was interesting watching them climb to the fruit (figs), stuff their mouths full of as many as they could, then climb back up to the top. At the top of the tree they would chew and swallow what they had taken in that load.

A special treat came when we were all watching these two chimps and the guide suddenly whispered "Behind! Behind!" We turned to look and a huge chimpanzee was walking on the forest floor right by us, barely making a sound! It happened so fast that we couldn't take a picture, but it will always be a vivid image in my mind.

All in all, it was well worth it to see our closest relatives in the wild and watch them acting so much like humans. I'm glad so many people are working together to keep them protected!