Mahale Mountains National Park, Tanzania

27 September 2007

Back to Travel Blog

During the heat of Katavi I had been day-dreaming about the clear and cool waters of Lake Tanganyika, and the first thing I did upon arriving at the simply lovely Greystoke Mahale camp was dive in and stay submerged for as long as possible. Luckily none of the local Hippos took me for an invading territorial male, and I luxuriated in the coolness of the water.

But for all the wonder of Lake Tanganyika, it is justifiably not the main draw of Mahale – that is left to the large family of Chimpanzees who over the years have become habituated to the human presence (due primarily to the arrival of Japanese scientists in the 1960s – without such habituation it would be practically impossible to see wild Chimpanzees, even for a second or two). But it is no zoo. The Chimps travel widely through the park and a great deal of walking often has to be done in order to get a sight of them. We were very lucky to be able to see them on both our full days, as some (though not most) guests do not see them at all – most famously Bill Gates who saw not a fleshy rump or whiskered visage in his 3 day visit some years ago.

But the walking could also be very painful, especially the first day when we climbed for over 2 hours, going more than 900m straight up in steamy conditions (OK, not that bad, but still too much for this Norwegian) – damn that was hard. My lack of fitness allied to my fondness for cigarettes and the occasional half a lager clearly bit me in the ass, and after 90 minutes of doggedly climbing and panting with 20kg of camera equipment, I am ashamed to admit that I nearly gave up. But my tireless guide Seif (who hadn’t even seemed to break a sweat) finally convinced me to hand him the back-pack and continue. But all pain was forgotten when suddenly we arrived and found six or seven of our closes cousins foraging in the trees – Chimpanzees have more than 97% of the same genes as humans. And especially when we glimpsed one of the very young babies hanging on to her mother and openly curious about what these non-climbing bipeds were.

We later found out from the inordinately knowledgeable and passionate manager of Greystoke and primatologist, Magdalena, that due to a virus outbreak a few years back there were now a much higher number of babies visible than any time in the past. In fact, due to Chimps sharing so many of our genes they are extremely susceptible to human viruses, which necessitates all visitors to wear surgical masks whilst in their presence (a very very small price to pay for the privilege of watching them in the wild).

The second day was much easier as the Chimps had decided to come down to roost closer to camp so we had an easy half-hour walk for an even more spectacular sighting as they literally ran through our group (maximum 6 visitors at any time with only 1 hour of viewing allowed), sat grooming only meters from us and generally led us a merry dance through the dense rain-forest. A simply magical encounter.

The other fascinating sighting at Mahale was watching the Hippos walk underwater in the crystal-clear water of Lake Tanganyika, something that can only be seen there or in a few parts of the Okavango Delta, Botswana.

(show this location in Google Maps)