Congo Stories


Gorillas in my Midst

Before dawn, we walked to the border, which still had an old sign which read “Welcome to Zaire”. It made me think of the Mohammed Ali v George Foreman “Rumble in the Jungle” fight in 1974, which helped take my mind off other pressing matters, like how to handle the un-uniformed man armed with a Kalishnikov bearing down on me. Fortunately, Butterscotch...


Into the Heart of Darkness

Before I’ve had a chance to soak up the “Pearl of Africa”, as Winston Churchill once dubbed Uganda, I took a quick detour into Joseph Conrad’s heart of darkness. Sitting in a bar last night keeping myself hydrated with African ales, a local man wearing a butterscotch suit with sneakers and a quarterslot gap in his front choppers asked me if I planned t...


The trek of a lifetime

The Gorillas - Congo Whne we were planning this trip through Africa we had decided that our budget meant that we would be unable to do the mountain gorilla trek, it's about $250 for the permit and then there are visas to be paid on top of that. However, things change. We'd been on the truck a while and everyone was talking about the trek and how m...