"The Most Elusive of Primates"

The Author Goes Chimpanzee Tracking in Nyungwe Forest

The most obvious reason to visit Rwanda is to see the world's most fascinating primates in their natural habitat - a quixotic quest if ever I've experienced one. For anyone with a few days to spare after tracking mountain gorillas, Nyungwe Forest offers a small primate B-side.

Monkeys are the most visible residents of the forest. Families of L'Hoest monkeys pick through vines in the roadside tangles of brush, and a troop of Colobus monkeys on the nearby tea estate has been habituated to refrain from fleeing when park visitors come crashing through the undergrowth.

But chimpanzees are the attraction that draws most primate-watchers to Nyungwe. For seventy US dollars, you can attempt to track them with the help of a guide, a handful of trackers, and a walkie-talkie. This experience is best suited for hikers who feel a twinge of excitement at the thought of waking up at 4:30 am, scrambling around a rainforest in pursuit of the most elusive of primates, and emerging from a green world, half a day later, crippled and completely covered with mud.

Chimp treks differ from normal Nyungwe hikes because there are no pre-cut trails that allow you to follow the chimps' erratic movements. The terrain is extremely steep; and because Nyungwe is a true rainforest, the ground cover is both exceptionally dense and sopping wet. The result is an experience that, when retold in later company, sounds like a journal entry of an early American pioneer: the journey was muddy, daunting, backbreaking, and occasionally meaningful.

A tracker with a machete begins the procession, hacking through the thickest vines and branches. The guide follows, indicating which entrances to small mammal burrows could potentially snap a leg if accidentally plunged into. Civilian hikers bring up the rear, wielding long, thin walking sticks. They plunge through thick curtains of ferns, ducking under vines, climbing over fallen tree trunks, ice-skating across the slippery sides of the hills, all the while trying to ignore the furry white caterpillars, black beetles, and other unnaturally large insects resting on the leaves that brush over their faces and necks.

Traveling with speed is, unfortunately, impossible. Therein lies the challenge. Chimps prefer to take their breakfast in the valleys that lie between hills. They will tolerate the presence of a tracker or two; but when the number of gawkers rises above comfort level, they swing over to the next valley, floating through the mountain treetops as effortlessly as butterflies.

Humans are a hopelessly grounded species. When the chimps disappear over the top of the next mountain, the only way to follow is to crawl up and down the hills in sluggish, groaning pursuit. The uphill slopes are steep enough that you can touch your nose to the trail without leaning forward more than a foot. Grabbing vines and pulling yourself up is the only way to steady your climb when the mud gives way.

Uphill may be slow and strenuous, but downhill makes people fall. Cover a wall in your house with vines and mud, and then walk down it. If you can do it without bruising the end of your spine when you slip, or overextending leg muscles when one foot gets hung up in the foliage and the other slides out from under you, then chimp tracking will come naturally to you.

After four hours of climbing, sliding, falling, and being scratched by thorns, all the while hearing the screams of chimps around every next bend, the front tracker informed our group for the tenth time that we had just missed them. We mutinied. How were six people hacking through brush ever going to sneak up on such quick animals? We wanted to turn back, we declared. Because park policy is to refund the tracking fee if no chimps are spotted, the guides huddled and began to whisper. After a few minutes, one of them assured us that if we did not see a chimp around the next bend, we would turn back. We were a group of strangers thrown together in the woods, and we did not have a unity of purpose. No one wanted to be the wimp who made everyone turn back twenty minutes too early. We set off again.

Another stretch down, more slipping, more thorns. The guide behind me fell and took me out. Like amateur skiers, we both tumbled down to the swampy creek at the bottom. Then another aching uphill. A vine I grabbed ripped out of the ground and sent me flailing backwards for a few yards.

Suddenly, the guides shushed us. We crept along with as few cracks and rustles as possible, not knowing what to expect. The line came to an abrupt halt. "Look!" the guide whispered, pointing up into a particularly tall tree ten meters away. "There!"

We peered up into the tree, quietly fanning out in a circle around him. We kept peering. Nothing.

"There! Keep looking!"


A branch moved. A brown hand reached out from the leaves and snatched a piece of fruit. Another minute passed. Then with a rustle, the full chimp emerged, glanced in our direction, dropped like lightning out of the tree, and scampered off through the brush.

No one said anything.

"Okay," said the guide. "It is time to go back."

On the way home, we stopped and saw another chimp hand reach out from a treetop perch on the other side of the valley to pick a piece of fruit. This was the moment when my legs, crushed beyond recognition after, among other things, cushioning the fall of a fully grown man, stopped working. I told the party to leave me behind and save themselves.

Somehow, after finding a paved road and landing a ride, miraculously in the correct cardinal direction (although also on the back of a flat bed truck, which would have given me a full blown anxiety disorder had I not been semi-conscious), I made it back to Park HQ. On the way home to Kigali, I dozed and stewed in a savage disappointment over the yield.

Until one week later, when I stopped limping, and when I learned that it took Jane Goodall three months before she saw her first chimp in the wild.