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Councilwoman enjoys "exotic" vacations
The 600-lb. mountain gorilla suddenly charged directly at Alain Isaac.
She dropped her head and adopted a passive position, as she'd been taught. Only a few feet away, the gorilla stopped, sniffed, and shuffled back to the jungle underbrush to resume its feeding, as if nothing had happened.
Isaac's heart rate began to return to normal.
For the Mountain Home city councilwoman and owner of Lane's Appliance and TV, it wasn't the first unusual, or even dangerous, vacation she'd ever taken. From facing down gorillas in Uganda to guerillas in South America, Isaac has seen parts of the world few people even consider venturing into, all part of a series of "exotic" vacations she takes each year with her sister, Arta, who works as a naturalist for the St. Paul, Minn., zoo.
For a long time, Isaac took the "normal" sort of vacations, if she took them at all, traveling to see friends and relatives, maybe a trip to Las Vegas. Once, she went to China as part of a highly controlled "typical tourist" trip provided to GE dealers by the company. It was the last time she stayed "on the beaten path."
Seven years ago, everything changed when her sister asked her to fill out an open spot in a safari she was taking to Tanzania.
"It was our first trip together," Isaac said. "It was the greatest experience. Everything was an adventure.
"We saw everything, the 'big five', rhino, lion, elephant, Cape Buffalo and cheetah." And unlike regular tours to Africa or other parts of the world, "we controlled where we went."
It got her fired up for something other than the typical museum/historic building tours. So two years later, when she was invited to New Zealand to be part of a focus group for appliance manufacturers and dealers, she reciprocated and invited her sister to go with her. "Everybody who was invited got to take a spouse. Not having one, I invited my sister," even though it did cause some confusion" and raised eyebrows when a woman showed up with a female "spouse," she laughed. With the seminar over, they headed into the back country, into The Remarkables, a chain of mountains in the country made famous by Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. They panned for gold, four-wheeled through it, and took helicopter trips into some of the more inaccessible areas.
Two years later, the pair were off to Ecuador and the Galapogos Islands. "I recommend that to anyone," she said of the remote islands made famous by Charles Darwin. "It's like stepping back in time.
"There are no people on a lot of the islands because there's no water. The iguanas, monitor lizards, tortoises, they're everywhere. You have to try not to step on them. And visually, it's truly other worldly."
Back on the coast, they headed into the Andes mountains. "We couldn't figure out why we were the only people in the hotel," she said.
Until they learned there was a civil war going on and an active guerilla campaign in the area. While touring the area they got caught in two roadblocks by "non-government forces."
"It was real chancy. We didn't know the language, or what was going on. They were tapping on our car with their rifles.
"But then you looked at their faces, and we didn't feel real threatened.
"Then the military showed up, with their rifles," shortly after the guerillas disappeared back into the jungle, "and I did feel threatened."
At the same time, she said, the country was "stunningly beautiful" and "for the most part, we were treated very well."
The next year they were off the Peru and the Inca cloud city of Macchu Piccu. To get there, "you take a road that's pretty intimidating by itself, then a train to Agua Caliente (at the base of the mountain) because there are no roads in there. It's either train, helicopter, or walk." A bus took them up the torturous road to the fabled lost city of the Incas, with sheer drops of up to 1,000 feet on the edges. "You just hope it has good brakes because its a very long way to the bottom."
They walked the final leg to the city. "When you first set eyes on it, it's the most visually stunning thing you've ever seen. It takes your breath away."
She sat on some terraces and watched the sun move across the city. "The shadows, it changes the way it looks every minute. You can see why this place is so spiritual."
From the heights of the Andes they then traveled down to the deep jungle of the upper reaches of the Amazon, taking an eight-hour canoe trip to reach the "hotel" where they stayed several nights. "It was very rustic. There's no electricity, you drink bottled water, and you sleep in mosquito nets because the rooms are open to the jungle. It was so far removed from civilization you can't believe it.
"You learned not to touch anything in the jungle because everything is poisonous. And you don't touch any vines, because they might not be a vine. They might be a snake."
For several days they ventured into the jungle to observe the bird populations, especially the macaws, that fill the treetops, but at one point they ran into some army ants, which devour everything in their path, "and we had to turn back. It was too dangerous."
Last year, they went to Panama and Costa Rica, heading inland, away from the main tourist meccas on the coast, to the rain forests where they enjoyed a walkway through the top of the jungle canopy. "We saw everything, from sloths to howler monkeys." On several occasions, they also ran into snakes, especially several fer de lance snakes, some of the most venomous -- and aggressive -- snakes in he world.
This year, she and her sister headed to Uganda to track mountain gorillas.
The reclusive and rare animals are protected by a variety of means, requiring advance permits to limit the number of tourists who enter their territory (about 200 a year), and special guides who teach people like Isaac how to react around the huge primates. Although normally docile and gentle, if frightened or enraged the powerful silverbacks can literally tear a person limb from limb.
The trip for Isaac, her sister and five other tourists began in Entebbe with a boat trip across Lake Victoria to see a sanctuary for chimps, a visit to an orphanage for children whose parents had died of AIDS (about one-third of all Africans are infected with the disease), and trips to a remote lodge and several national parks to observe the wildlife. That trip included a boat ride up a river where they were careful to avoid the crocodiles and especially the hippos. Bull hippos are highly territorial and kill more people each year than all other wild animals combined. They can bite a boat in half.
"Wildlife is everywhere," Isaac said, from elephants crossing the road to lions lazily watching gazelles and zebras grazing on the grasslands. Most of the natives are so used to seeing animals that, for Americans are a sight only found in zoos, that they simply ignore them.
Finally, they reached the Bwindi region, an impenetrable jungle forest, and made camp at the base of a mountain where some of the gorillas were known to be.
"There were three types of gorillas in the area," Issac said, "the ones that were frightened of people and stayed in the deep jungle, the ones that had become habituated to people and were safe to be near (relatively), and the 'white gorillas' -- us," she said.
Their guides were highly trained in gorilla behavior and careful drilled the tour group in "gorilla etiquette." Act passive if charged -- don't run. Don't wear bright colors. Don't make eye contact with them -- that's "very" aggressive behavior. Be very quiet, they don't like noises.
"If you have a cold, they won't let you go," into the mountains, Isaac said. "You don't want to sneeze. It might frighten them, but more importantly, their DNA is so close to ours that they can catch our diseases, but they have no immunity to them."
From the camp their climbed through a narrow trail in the jungle up into the mountains for over two hours. Their party consisted of the Isaac and her fellow tourists, a porter for each to carry their water ("you take a lot of water, it's very hot and humid"), a guide, and four men with AK-47 rifles to protect them from the poachers that infest the area. Poachers killed several tourists in the area just a few years ago.
Suddenly, they saw the gorillas, a small family of less than a dozen, most eating the vegetation placidly. "You look around, and suddenly, they're just there. The jungle is so thick."
The guide moved one plant aside to help them see, and there was a female on the other side, annoyed that they'd taken her food.
The guide, who "spoke to them in gorilla, he sounded just like them" told the tourists to move aside, as one of the gorillas wanted to move down the trail they were on. The huge animal walked literally right past them.
Then Isaac heard some chest banging and howling and saw another silverback do a "bluff charge" toward them. "Then he just stopped, and it was over. After a while, we'd been there too long, and you start to annoy them. They started to move off," and she and the rest of the party returned to camp.
"You can't comprehend that this is really happening, that you're there with them," she said. "You don't wake up one day and say, "I'll go find a gorilla. But when you're there, it's mind blowing.
"It's not a trip for the faint of heart. The roads are bad, the paths are narrow -- it's a jungle, but it's worth it."
"Some people," Isaac said, "save their money for nice cars or bigger houses. Something they like. But taking tours to out-of-the way places is something I've found I really like. So that's what I save for."
And where will she head for next year's vacation? They haven't decided, but it won't be a typical tourist destination like Disneyland.
"My sister may be leading a group into Panama next year."
Or maybe, down the road, Antarctica. "Most tourists don't go there."
"That's kind of the point. You get hooked on the exotic. I've seen places few people get to see."