Mahale Mountains, bordering Lake Tanganyika, are home to some of Africa's last remaining wild chimpanzees: a population of roughly eight hundrerd, habituated to human visitors by a Japanese research project founded in the 1960s. To get there you will travel by steamer from Kigoma and then with a local fishing boat.

A magical experience
Tracking the chimps of Mahale is a magical experience. The guide's eyes pick out last night's nests - shadowy clumps high in a gallery of trees crowding the sky. Scraps of half-eaten fruit and fresh dung become valuable blues, leading deeper into the forest. Butterlies flit in the dappled sunlight. Then suddenly you are in their midst: preening each other`s glossy coats in concentrated huddles, squabbling noisily or bounding into the trees to swing effortlessly between the vines.

Diverse forest fauna
While chimpanzees are the star attraction, the slopes support a diverse forest fauna including readily observed troops of red colobus, red-tailed and blue monkeys and a kaleidoscopic array of colourful forest birds. The park is home of the endemic race of Angola colobus monkey - to high grassy ridges chequered with alpine bamboo.