Uganda

You could trek for 10 hours before your guide locates a family of Mountain Gorillas in Queen Elizabeth Park in Uganda. We chased a troop for an hour before learning they were not  safe to approach, and carried on. 

I'm not sure you'd even call what we did after that a hike. More like a life-changing climb down the side of a mountain. My guide practically stopped the circulation in my am with his clutch during the 70-degree death-defying trek. Trails were nonexistent. I clung to vines wishing I'd  had a climbing rope, or maybe a crane. 

When we finally met an approachable family of five gorillas, they came to us.  I mean a mother and baby walked within two feet of us and sat down five feet away from our small group. The baby romped on the trunk of a downed tree, doing balance beam tricks, dropping to the ground, checking on mom, leaping up and down, and being incredibly photogenic.

Two full-grown gorillas played in a nearby tree, and the 350 pound Silverback - the leader of the troop found a seat in the jungle where he could chomp leaves and pass gas, paying no attention to us, cameras clicking just five feet from his stench. I was sure he would pull his mask off at any moment and expose a movie stuntman, but his occasional grunts were pure gorilla.