I hope you had a good summer.
I was working most of the summer.
I'm always working, because I like to keep busy,
and I have expensive taste in real estate.
But I did take one vacation.
It was a lifelong dream of mine, and I went to Rwanda
to see the mountain gorillas.
And I'm sure you remember last season Portia gave me
an amazing birthday gift.
The Ellen DeGeneres Wildlife Fund is being set up.
We're building a campus in Rwanda
to help continue the work of one of my idols, Dian Fossey.
So in June-- yes.
[APPLAUSE]
So in June, Portia and I went to Africa,
and before we went to Rwanda we went to a few countries.
We went to Kenya.
We stayed at a place called Giraffe Manor.
It is a hotel where this herd of giraffes hang out.
They come and visit the property.
They're free to go anywhere they want,
but they come there a lot.
It's an amazing place.
It smells a little giraffey, but it's still amazing.
And you're so close to the giraffes you--
and when I say close, I mean really close.
That giraffe, it-- listen.
Yeah.
It was cute and all, but it ate so much the bill
for breakfast, $400.
Just for breakfast.
I couldn't believe how comfortable they
were around people, and then I saw this other camera angle
and, yeah.
How did I fall for that?
Urg.
So then I went to Rwanda, and it is
hard to describe how amazing my experience was.
If you get a chance to go to Rwanda, I urge you.
The country is amazing, the people are amazing,
and everyone said, when you see the gorillas you're
going to see--
they're going to be very, very close.
And they were right.
You're very close to them.
But before you go to look for the gorillas
the guides give you a few rules, and the first rule
is, don't ever whatever you do, point,
because gorillas take that as a sign of aggression.
So when we came across-- this was the first gorilla
that we saw.
No pointing, no pointing.
No pointing.
[LAUGHTER]
No pointing.
Got it, no pointing.
Luckily he didn't seem to mind.
All these gorillas have been around humans
for their entire lives, so they're used to people.
And it's a small group usually, only like eight people or so.
But they're still wild animals, and they're large,
so you'd never know what's going to happen.
So here's a situation we were in.
We heard something approaching.
We could hear the crackling of bushes,
and our guide said everybody stay still.
We didn't know what was coming, and then this came through.
He's 47 years old.
He's joining that.
It's OK.
So you can see how close we were, and we're all trying--
there's the guy trying to cover me.
He runs to me to try to protect me.
So there's Portia, and there's me and that guy
that is protecting.
So now all of a sudden the gorilla decides to go this way.
It's a silverback, by the way, which is--
that's my sister-in-law ducking down to be respectful.
And look it just bumps her as it goes past,
and then he goes to get her to bring her to me.
Amazing.
I mean, you can imagine you're scared,
because that was the first gorilla we saw after I
had pointed to the other one.
And then I was scared, but then I
got so jealous that it bumped my sister in-law.
I was like, I want to be bumped by a gorilla.
You heard me.
[LAUGHTER]
Then we went back the next day, and we
didn't have to hike as far.
This was a different family, a different group of gorillas,
and it's like they knew we were coming.
They were just waiting for us, and then they
asked for tickets to 12 Days.
So this is a different group, like I said.
And while we were watching, this is
a silverback, another silverback from another group.
So you're supposed to duck down, it's respectful.
I ask people to do that around me.
So you can see, it's getting closer,
so we decide that we're going to move away.
So we move away, and my friends were up there near it,
and they move away.
Now this is like as close as I am to you right now.
We just couldn't believe--
and he just wanted to eat some of that bush.
Everyone else had left, and Portia and I are just right
there.
They're in the car, driving away, and we're just--