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Below are obviously gorillas. They're in Mgahinga park in Uganda, bordering Rwanda and D.R. Congo. It cost about $240 US (I think) for a permit to hike in and watch them for an hour. For a group of 6 tourists (all they allow each day) the fee includes a guide, 2 trackers and about a dozen armed guards (one with a grenade launcher if you're lucky). The next day we hiked up an extinct volcano (again armed guards included in the price of admission). I had planned on doing the left most peak, Mt. Muhavura which translates to "the guide" , with a peak at 13537 ft, and the trailhead starting about 5600 ft below that. Unfortunately the army's truck was broken so the guards couldn't be transported to the base, so we ended up doing the one just to the right, Mt. Gahinga. It translates to "small pile of stones", not quite as impressive as "the guide". The 11394 ft peak, 3700 ft above trailhead, also has a crater swamp as opposed to the crater lake on "the guide". Between the constant rain that turned the path into a muddy river, the bitter cold and the cloud that removed any sort of view I think I was in a small minority that enjoyed the hike. Getting to walk into Rwanda at the top made it all worth while, and watching Paul and Andy fall constantly for the entire hike/slide down.
It turns out a $5 bribe will get you into D.R. Congo (known as Zaire until '97, the sign is a little outdated but I think signage is understandably low on their list of priorities). Seems a reasonable price for a country that is host to the most deadly conflict since WWII. The bar (I use the term loosely) we went drinking at was home to the most disgusting toilet I have ever seen, heard about or could possibly have imagined. Thank god as a boy I can pee standing up, especially as it was a squat toilet. Even more disturbing than the toilets were some of the soldiers in town. In Africa I got pretty used to people with all sorts of guns being around, but I found it worrisome when they looked to be about 15.
At one of the equator crossings there was a guy with a bucket, who would fill it with water and let it drain out on the equator and ten feet to the north and south to show how the water drains in different directions, and straight out at the equator. Having doubts on how much the effect of the earth's rotation on a bucket of water varies over ten feet, or even that the placement of the equatorial marker is accurate within that distance, I did a little research. The effect is negligible. Unless you have a large circular shallow pan with a small hole and you wait between a day and a week for all residual effects of filling to die out then it's going to drain in a random direction. I knew I should have broken his bucket just on principal. Type water+drain+equator into google and you'll find plenty of lengthy explanations.