Uganda’s unbeaten trail: Cadiz’s Moores venture the Impenetrable Forest

BY SHAWN DIGITY (twitter@DIGITYnodoubt)

Cadiz’s Pat and Judy Moore recently took a trip to Uganda. The central African country touches the north shores of Lake Victoria and neighbors other nations like Rwanda, Tanzania, and Kenya. They went to Uganda with hopes of doing something adventurous but also something off the beaten trail. So the Moores chose one with a more daunting name, as Judy revealed: “We actually went through what’s called the Impenetrable Forest. That is the name, the actual name of the forest. It’s called the Impenetrable Forest. We had to walk along a very narrow path on the side of a mountain until we got into the actual forest itself. We had a couple of guides. Two of them had machetes, and they literally just cut a path for us through this forest. And we had to climb up the mountain to get there.”

As the machetes might indicate, the journey up into the Forest was a trail-blazing affair; the Moores followed their knife-wielding guides up 6,000 feet on a tiny mountain path — that was just to get to the threshold of the Impenetrable Forest. While even being in shape, Judy and Pat still confessed that they had to dig deeper as they worked their way up and into the Forest. “It was really hard, but I was like the little engine that could: ‘I think I can, I think I can.’ Just keep putting one foot in front of the other. And don’t pass out,” Judy admitted.

The climb was only part of the experience, however. Upon penetrating the impenetrable, the Moores quickly came face-to-face with the next challenge. Like something out of the 1990s movie “Congo,” the Moores had walked into a jungle with unhappy hosts. The Forest was full of mountain gorillas, and they were in the process of being habituated — familiarized with the presence of humans.

A male gorilla promptly entered the scene and began a performance of chest-beating and charging as the tour reached a standstill. This particular group of gorillas was still new in the habituation process, so the male gorilla’s reaction was expected — at least from the guides’ perspectives. After the charging and chestpuffing, the 550-pound gorilla chased away a baby gorilla and ripped down a tree branch in an attempt to convince the tour that they should be scared of him. But the tour guides stood their ground. Judy and Pat learned a lesson about the jungle after watching their unwavering guides: “Only prey runs.” But when a gorilla comes speeding toward you, the worst-case scenario can pop into your mind. “We’ve done some scary things, and risky things, not too risky, but we’re adventurous. I was 100% certain — not that I was going to die — but that this was going to be really bad. I was 100% convinced. He was mad. He was charging straight at us,” Judy explained.

“I looked at my two guides, and they’re not even moving,” Pat said, so he mirrored them. But he mentioned that the silverbacks weren’t the worst part. “The scariest part for me wasn’t the gorillas. It was walking out. When you walk out, you’re on the side of a mountain. When you get to the forest, and you fall, they might not find you,” Pat commented. “It was very psychologically challenging. And it was very physically challenging,” Judy added.

Pat and Judy made it in and out of the Impenetrable Forest, and they successfully scaled the mountain, but their next adventure involved scaling of a different sort: the search for a scaly anteater, aka the pangolin. Pangolins are some of the most endangered animals in the world, Judy clarified. They’ve been hunted to extinction in some Asian regions because their scales were believed to be aphrodisiacs. But the Moores were able to see one up close in the wild after a late-night search. The scaly anteaters only come out at night, hence the midnight tour. But it wasn’t going to be as simple as taking a hike and stumbling onto one of the imbricated creatures. The Moores also had to wander through “black rhino territory.”

Pat and Judy were urged to stay quiet lest they wanted a rhino to catch wind of their presence. Trackers warned, “Don’t talk, don’t even whisper, don’t make a sound because if the black rhinos know that we’re here…” The rest might be self-explanatory. Rhinos are some of the most volatile animals in the world. They’d charge at the drop of a hat if they knew someone had breached their domain. “This is their territory. They don’t want us in their territory, Judy recalled. So while the darkness made finding pangolins harder, it masked the tour’s presence to rhinos.

Timing is also crucial; you have to catch the pangolin while they’re exiting their burrow. The pangolin’s scales make a soft rustling sound when they walk. It’s enough for an experienced tracker to hear, but many would miss it. And for the Moores, the stars aligned because their tracker was able to find the pangolin. It immediately rolled up and went into defense. Its armor is better served to protect against predators. Unfortunately, the pangolin’s rolling up makes them easy pickings for humans — part of why they have been driven to the point of endangerment. But Pat and Judy got to witness a real pangolin in the wild. “We just got lucky,” Pat said. “We had a really good tracker and really good guide.”

Judy and Pat Moore are adventurers at heart, and they traveled to Africa in search of a challenging and unique journey. “We wanted to do something that the vast majority of people don’t do,” Judy explained. Somewhere in the depths of the Ugandan, gorilla-inhabited jungles, that goal was probably achieved.