So here we are, back in Africa…my favorite continent although no one who sees me in my everyday life of skirt suits and Louboutins would believe that.   I have a secret alter ego who enjoys the adventures of the great outdoors apparently…even though I hate the ugly brown boots that this requires (or perhaps I just love that this country demands daily naps and bedtime by 9 pm…).  Tomorrow we begin the first (and biggest) adventure of this trip: trekking up the volcano to find the Silverback mountain gorillas!  And at this moment, I find myself once more questioning our decision making skills because our quest is to find the Susa family…the largest, farthest family of gorillas that can be an up to a 7 hour hike uphill one way in the rain forest jungle…

Before our trip, we researched the families, we went on a few practice hikes, and we told our travel planner of our hope to see Susa above all others.   She warned us that only the very fit would be able to sustain that hike, but we could tell our local guide and try it.  We chuckled as we’re world travelers, we are completely capable of the hike.   We were on Kili after all!  (Granted, we didn’t summit Kili…and in fact we barely survived the half day hike to waterfalls while our guide chain smoked and mocked us, but that is a story for another day…)  It wasn’t until we actually arrived in Northern Rwanda, in the village of the gorillas where every employee of the lodge sees the trekkers daily before and after that we begun to question our life choices once again…

“We’re going to do Susa tomorrow!” said your favorite wanderers to whomever would listen.  

“Oh…wow…you’ll need a packed lunch” replied the hotel manager with a look of maternal concern.  She’s just like my mom, a worry wart.

“We’re going to be in the Susa group” we told the gang of local high school students who joined us for a pre-dinner walk through the cow fields (just in case that hotel manager’s face held any truth, we wanted to stretch the legs and break back in the boots for an hour today…)

“That is very, very far” the teenagers told me in their practiced English…and then suggested we help fund their needed soccer ball now instead of tomorrow just in case…

“We’re doing Susa” we told the waiter as we ordered our packed lunch after dinner.

“Oh, ummm….oh, yes” he stammered with a shocked look of panic and fear.

Alright, so we might have a history of making bad decisions when we travel (see secret trip to North Korea, et all…), but at this point even we took pause to think about what these signs (or rather very shocked reactions of the locals) actually meant.   Was the plan to see Susa really so outlandish for two 30-ish year old, mildly fit people?   We hiked…a few times a year.  We didn’t join the American expats living in Lagos for their pre-dinner cocktails (even though they brought some really good duty free bourbon…) and settled for beer instead.   And even though we didn’t disclose it to anyone important, we had completely accounted for my husband’s recent back injury (six bulging discs…) due to a car wreck when finalizing the Susa group decision!  [Ed. note: we really hadn’t completely accounted for the accident. Physical therapy for a month only reinforced that my back was not exactly in a good happy trekking place…]

We can totally do this…and if we can’t let’s hope the porter is wearing a turban for that essential haul up the mountain just like the Berber man on the Saharan desert dunes…