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The secret about my gorilla trekking safari in the Congo

Congo - Lowland gorilla trekking Odzala - gorilla in forest

Trekking in the Republic of the Congo to see the western lowland gorilla is a different and more adventurous experience than that on offer with the mountain gorillas in Eastern Africa. This is one of the richest eco systems in the world and the experience here is real life, untamed, wild and completely natural. I recently explored the Odzala forest on a trekking safari.

I’m in the Congo – deepest, darkest, home-of-Tarzan-of-the-apes Congo, and I feel as though I am living inside Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel. The Congo just by its very name conjures up visions of pure untamed jungle, teeming with wildlife and the possibility that Tarzan really existed here – perhaps he is still is lurking in the enormous buttressed trees, drenched with lianas and vines.

But as I look up into the incredible canopy overhead, I see glimpses of birds far above me, colourful dragonflies and butterflies – pitch black with bright orange tips fluttering through the forest undergrowth.

Edgar Rice Burroughs never visited Africa but when you visit the Congo, and these simply beautiful, untouched, pristine forests, one realises that his imagination and writings are (almost) exactly mirroring the reality.

As you trek in the forests of Odzala, fighting through exceptionally thick marantaecea, you stop, listen, and continue slowly, until you come across the great apes, in this case – western lowland gorillas, just as you imagined, but now real in the flesh.

Getting to Odzala Forest and reserve involves a fair amount of travelling including a commercial flight, and two long road transfers, and even crossing the Moussaka-Likouala River on a chain-pulled pontoon, pulled by hand!

  • Congo - Lowland gorilla trekking Odzala - Ngaga camp.jpg

The drive to the luxury camp nearest to the gorillas is along a dirt road lined with grasses which reach as high as the forest elephants’ eyes.  There are sedges and swamps, egrets, bishop birds, and then through thick vegetation of lianas, creepers and vines there are greens of every hue as the forest gets thicker and higher.

Our camp, with its beehive-shaped raffia huts based on a traditional Ba’aka hut, is incredibly comfortable. The food is wonderful (I see a large intake of delicious calories coming my way!) and the staff fabulous and knowledgeable. Not what one usually expects on an adventure-filled safari in the middle of nowhere. 

The next morning we left early, walking through Pentadesma butyracea (also called butter trees) and then the tracker led us into the marantaecea, in search of my first sighting of the western lowland gorilla. Since childhood, frogs and primates have fascinated me the most, and here I had the opportunity to add another great ape species to my list.

Gorillas are very sociable creatures. The females fall under the protection of the silverback, who can be intimidating. We stood in thick marantaecea (the western lowland’s staple diet along with fruits and seeds), and watched as a family of 21 filled and dinned off fruits from a huge tree.

We saw Jupiter, the huge male silverback, climbing unusually high in the canopy, his huge muscular frame seriously testing some rather narrow branches. But the smell of ripe fruit was a strong incentive!

  • Congo - lowland gorilla trekking Odzala - eating.

Having already trekked many times in Rwanda and Uganda to see the mountain gorillas, this was an altogether different experience. Yes they are also gorillas, but the western lowland (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) looks slightly different.

The male’s silverback colouring runs all the way to their thighs, whilst unlike their long-haired cousins in the mountains, here the temperature is much hotter, and so an extra warm coat is not required.

The western lowland gorillas have a tint of red hair on their heads not found in the mountain gorillas.


This gives them a slightly rakish air – the exotic cousin, living in the wild and remote forests, where hundreds of species of plants, insects and perhaps even birds have not yet been officially identified and named.

This land of forests and streams as a whole has 10 000 plant, 1000 bird and 400 mammal species, thereby making it one of the richest eco systems in the world.

Actual sightings of gorillas in this environment are quite different to those experienced in the mountains, where one can invariably observe

within a few metres of the mountain gorillas in open bamboo forests or clearings, and the precious hour is strictly adhered to.

Here in the Congo, time is flexible because the exploration - and this is exploration in the true sense of the word - is slightly more testing. It seems more ‘real’, more natural. The gorillas are not always within eight metres of you, and you may move several times to observe them.

They accept you, but from a distance. The gorillas observe and tolerate you, but are little removed. This is the real way to trek, to discover, to become attuned to the forest and realise that this is real life, untamed, wild and completely natural.

These gorillas are ‘human-tolerant’, not ‘semi-habituated’. You know at this moment that you are one of very few privileged individuals to visit this wild habitat, and discover these extraordinary animals.

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