Chimps

2 December, Thursday; Kigale, Uganda. Today is the chimp trek day! The highlight of the trip for us (and everyone else) is the gorillas. I honestly didn’t put too much thought into the chimp trek, but as we started hearing about it, our excitement grew. We dressed for a trek through the rain forest, which I didn’t plan for appropriately. Luckily, our travelmate, Karen, loaned me a pair of long socks which we needed in order to tuck our pants in for protection from safari ants. I was cleaning them off the socks even hours after the safari, so I’m super thankful to gotten those! We get a briefing from a guide and drive off to the starting point. We’re told that there are 3 groups of about 120 each that are habituated to humans, though there are other groups in the forest. Two are used for research and the other one is for tourism. We will have 1 short hour with the chimps to limit our impact on them. Ben and I are paired with 3 other travellers, all American to Ben’s amusement. I quickly learn that the two girls are here on a fellowship while studying at GWU, my alma mater. Such a small world. Michael, an American banker living in Hong Kong, rounds out the group. After maybe 10 minutes of hiking, we start hearing the chimp calls. It was surreal and I have a hard time even explaining how exciting it is to be surrounded by all of the different chimp calls echoing through the trees. Our first encounter was to see movement through the trees as a chimp travelled in the thick foliage. Shortly thereafter, we see 3 chimps travelling on the ground – one of them a mama chimp with her baby. Unfortunately, that was our only sighting of her and it was definitely too short. To see these animals in the wild is so fantastic! We continue to follow the chimps on the narrow trail and after a while, come across an older male sitting in a small clearing. Again, all I can think to describe the encounter is surreal. Here I am less than 20 feet from a chimpanzee and he’s just sitting around, grooming himself and watching us. He makes a loud call to the others and we briefly are visited by another chimp. He gets bored with us and we move on, continuing to search for the chimps and follow them on their search for food.

The highlight of our time comes when we encounter another male chimp. We’re all snapping away and just watching. He calls out and we hear movement afoot in the forest. Soon, a large group (5 or more) travels near us through the foliage and we delight with every new chimp that passes, even if quickly and partly out of view. The male monkey’s best friend visits him and we were lucky enough to get a chance to watch them groom each other.

The rest of the time with the chimps is spent following a few others down they valley and then our hour is quickly up. We spend some time looking at other monkeys, though it’s different because they are up in the trees and hard to spot. Our guides are very knowledgeable and answer all of our questions and offer interesting tidbits. For instance, we learn about how outside babies are treated in a new group. If for some reason, a pregnant female leaves her group and joins a new one, they will kill and eat the baby once it’s born since they don’t want to share their food with a baby from a different group. Also, they are not vegetarians. About 10% of their diet is meat – from other monkeys!