Gorillas in the Mist Read Online Free Page A

I snapped away.
    On the morning of October 15 the pair arrived at the village of Kisoro and its Traveler’s Rest hotel, near the Uganda-Congo-Rwanda border. By now they were hardly exchanging a word, but Dian was glad of the silence for it enabled her to absorb the African scene without distraction.
    The Traveler’s Rest sits within hiking distance of mountain gorilla country on the western slopes of the Virunga volcano chain, and during the eight years Walter Baumgartel had been the hotel’s proprietor, he had become something of an expert on these elusive animals. A stop at the Traveler’s Rest was almost mandatory for anyone wanting news of the gorillas. On this occasion Baumgartel informed Dian and Alexander that the world-renowned wildlife photographers Joan and Alan Root were currently on Mt. Mikeno, in the Congo sect ion of the Virungas, where they had been filming gorillas for some weeks. Reluctantly the white hunter agreed to try and reach them.
    They crossed into the Congo and a day later reached the jumping-off point for the climb to Mt. Mikeno. By late that evening they had completed the ascent.
    We are now at a base camp high up on the Virungas. The Great White and I climbed Mt. Mikeno from a small village of thatched huts and hundreds of blacks at the base of the mountain. After hours of haggling over loads andmoney, we hired eleven porters and two guides. The altitude here is 11,400 feet, so you can imagine what happened to my lungs on the way up. It took six and a half hours to get to this camp and I thought I would die. My rib cage was bursting, my legs were creaking and in agony, and my ankle felt as though a crocodile had his jaws around it. How those porters do it, each carrying around thirty pounds on his head, I’ll never know.
    Halfway up, the leading guide was charged by a gorilla! All I could hear were the screams of the animal, and by the time we got to the spot, the gorilla was probably a mile away. I was extremely disappointed not to see him, and even more so when they all described the incident in such fast Swahili I couldn’t understand a word. Of course, the Great White is reluctant to translate!
    Yesterday we started out early to track the family of gorillas we had heard on the way up. We found fresh tracks-much bigger than my foot. And fresh nests and wild celery croppings. But after six hours of hacking our way through dense jungle, I had to give up. There’s little water available in volcanic mountains, and my tongue was literally stuck to the roof of my mouth and my lips were sealed together from thirst. My right ankle was all but useless, and my whole body was one big sheet of pain.
    When I reached camp, our cookboy, Manual, came running, looked at me, and started screaming for help. I didn’t realize what I must have looked like—swollen lips, bloodshot eyes, phlegm running from my mouth. He brought me water, made tea, and took off my shoes. I collapsed.
    A few days later Alan Root and his wife, Joan, who were living in a rickety cabin nearby and resented our invasion, took pity on me and asked if I wanted to go out with them. He seems like a gentle, soft-spoken person, but I feel a little uncomfortable with him. He looks sort of studiousin his gray, plastic-rimmed glasses, and he’s probably stooped from bending over to get just the right shot. It’s obvious he’s confident in his photography and knows he’s one of the best in the world. And his wife, Joan, seems made in his image. They handled the terrain like pros, while I panted along behind.
    The terrain was unbelievable, almost straight up, and we had to hang on to vines to get along or go on hands and knees. For a long time we found no sign of gorillas, but then we came upon a bedding place where thirteen of them had slept the night before.
    There followed the experience that would determine the future course of Dian’s life.
    Sound preceded sight, and odor preceded both in the form of an overwhelming, musky, barnyard