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Gombe Stream NP |
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| Brief Profile: |
- 52 sq km (20 sq miles) in size
- Tanzania's smallest National Park
- Dry season months are best for visitors
- Chimpanzees are the focus of any visit
- Area has a rich history from early Africans to Slavers and British explorers like Livingstone
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| Gombe Stream is the smallest of Tanzani's NP, comprising a thin strip of ancient forest set among mountains and steep valleys on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. Chimpanzees are the main reason to visit Gombe Steam - they are the stars of the world's most famous chimpanzee community, made famous by the pioneering British researcher Jane Goodall, whose years of constant observation since 1960 have brought to light startling new facts about mankind's closest cousins. It's a great place to see chimps up close and personal as many of the family groups are habituated to humans. With the possible exception of Mahale Mountains National Park, no other park in Africa can offer such a magnificent experience with chimpanzees. |
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Although the chimpanzees are the park's star attraction there are many other primates, including baboons, vervet monkeys, red colobus monkeys, blue monkeys and bush babies. Being at the southern end of the Albertine Rift, Gombe is also a birding paradise - a crossover of East African savannah birds and West African forest species.
Gombe lies on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika and it is not accessible by road or by air. The easiest and cheapest way to visit Gombe is on a daytrip, using a chartered motorboat from Kigoma for the 16km journey to the park and to go on a guided forest walk - although anyone interested in chimpanzees would definitely want to stay a minimum of two days.
The park's geography is also stunning. Lined by 13 river valleys, and forming a narrow strip, it encompasses rolling hills of miombo woodland, which rise from the shores of Lake Tanganyika and eventually reach a height of more than 1 500m on the rift escarpment.
Seeing that Gombe is such a small park it is a destination that is worth combining with the big game parks of the south and south-west - the Selous Game Reserve, and the Katavi and Ruaha National Parks - for an overall Tanzania safari experience. This is a good stopover for keen photographers, where you can take magnificent pictures of sunsets over Lake Tanganyika and eastern Zaire. |
Best time to visit:
The park is quite remote, and the best time to visit is between May and October. |
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