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Gombe
Stream National Park.
Gombe is the smallest of 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, who in 1960 founded a behavioral research program
that now stands as the longest-running study of its kind in the
world.
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.
About Gombe
Stream National Park.
Size: 52 sq km (20 sq miles), Tanzania's smallest 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 dirt roads, and to Mpulungu in Zambia by a weekly
ferry. Chimpanzee trekking; hiking, swimming and snorkeling;
visit the site of Henry Stanley's famous “Dr Livingstone I
presume” at Ujiji near
Kigoma.
When to go.
The chimps don't roam as far in the wet season (February-June,
November-mid December) so may be easier to find; better picture
opportunities in the dry (July-October and late December |