Gombe National Park: Africa Natural Safari
AFRICA NATURAL SAFARI (The best tour company in Tanzania)
Specialized in:
Wildlife safaris, Cultural tourism, Beach holidays and
Mountain climbing
Contact +255 653 679 958
Gombe National Park
Gombe
Stream National Park, located on the western border of Tanzania and the Congo,
is most famous for Jane Goodall, the resident primatologist who spent many
years in its forests studying the behaviour of the endangered chimpanzees
Situated
on the wild shores of Lake Tanganyika, Gombe Stream is an untamed place of lush
forests and clear lake views. Hiking and swimming are also popular activities here,
once the day’s expedition to see the chimpanzees is over.
Gombe
Stream’s main attraction is obviously the chimpanzee families that live
protected in the park’s boundaries. Guided walks are available that take
visitors deep into the forest to observe and sit with the extraordinary
primates for an entire morning — an incredible experience and one that is the
highlight of many visitors’ trips to Africa. Besides chimpanzee viewing, many
other species of primates live in Gombe Stream’s tropical forests. Vervet and
colobus monkeys, baboons, forest pigs and small antelopes inhabit the dense
forest, in addition to a wide variety of tropical birdlife.
An
excited whoop erupts from deep in the forest, boosted immediately by a dozen
other voices, rising in volume and tempo and pitch to a frenzied shrieking
crescendo. It is the famous ‘pant-hoot’ call: a bonding ritual that allows the
participants to identify each other through their individual vocal
stylizations. To the human listener, walking through the ancient forests of
Gombe Stream becomes a spine-chilling outburst which is also an indicator of
imminent visual contact with man’s closest genetic relative: the chimpanzee.
Gombe
is the smallest of all the Tanzania’s national parks: a fragile strip of
chimpanzee habitat straddling the steep slopes and river valleys that hem in
the sandy northern shore of Lake Tanganyika. Its chimpanzees – habituated to
human visitors – were made famous by the pioneering work of Jane Goodall, whom
in 1960 founded a behavioural research program that now stands as the
longest-running study of its kind in the world. The matriarch Fifi, the last
surviving member of the original community – that was only three-years old when
Goodall first set foot in Gombe – is still regularly seen by visitors.
Chimpanzees
share about 98% of their genes with humans, and no scientific expertise is
required to distinguish between the individual repertoires of pants, hoots and
screams that define the celebrities, the powerbrokers, and the supporting
characters. Perhaps you will see a flicker of understanding when you look into
a chimp’s eyes, assessing you in return – a look of apparent recognition across
the narrowest of species barriers.
The
most visible of Gombe’s other mammals are also primates. A troop of beachcomber
olive baboons, under study since the 1960s, is exceptionally habituated,
whereas the red-tailed and red colobus monkeys – the latter regularly hunted by
chimps – stick to the forest canopy.
The
park’s 200-odd bird species range from the iconic fish eagle to the jewel-like
Peter’s twinspots that hop tamely around the visitors’ centre.
After
dusk, a dazzling night sky is complemented by the lanterns of hundreds of small
wooden boats, bobbing on the lake like a sprawling city.
About Gombe Stream National Park
Size: 52 sq km (20 sq miles),
Tanzania’s smallest national park.
Location: 16 km (10 miles) north of
Kigoma on the shore of Lake Tanganyika in western Tanzania.
Getting there
Kigoma is connected to Dar and Arusha by scheduled flights, to Dar and Mwanza
by a slow rail service, to Mwanza, Dar and Mbeya by rough dirty roads, and to
Mpulungu in Zambia by a weekly ferry.
From Kigoma, local lake-taxis take up to three hours to reach Gombe, or
motorboats can be chartered, taking less than one hour.
What to do
Chimpanzee trekking, hiking, swimming and snorkeling;
Visit the site of Henry Stanley’s famous “Dr Livingstone I presume” at Ujiji
near Kigoma, and watch the renowned dhow builders at work. .
NOTE
Strict rules are in place to safeguard you and the chimps. Allow at least 2 days to at least see them – this is not a zoo so there are no guarantees where they’ll be each day
Strict rules are in place to safeguard you and the chimps. Allow at least 2 days to at least see them – this is not a zoo so there are no guarantees where they’ll be each day
For
more information visit www.africanaturaltours.com
.
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