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Mahale Mountains National Park
Set deep in the heart of the African interior,
inaccessible by road and only 100km (60 miles) south of where
Stanley uttered that immortal greeting “Doctor Livingstone, I
presume”, is a scene reminiscent of an Indian Ocean island beach
idyll.
Silky white coves hem in the azure waters of
Lake Tanganyika, overshadowed by a chain of wild, jungle-draped
peaks towering almost 2km above the shore: the remote and mysterious
Mahale Mountains.
Mahale Mountains, like its northerly neighbour
Gombe Stream, is home to some of Africa’s last remaining wild
chimpanzees: a population of roughly 800, habituated to human
visitors by a Japanese research project founded in the 1960s.
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 clues, leading deeper into the forest. Butterflies
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.
The area is also known as Nkungwe, after the
park's largest mountain, held sacred by the local Tongwe people, and
at 2,460 metres (8,069 ft) the highest of the six prominent points
that make up the Mahale Range.
And 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.
You can trace the Tongwe people's ancient
pilgrimage to the mountain spirits, hiking through the montane
rainforest belt – home to an endemic race of Angola colobus monkey -
to high grassy ridges chequered with alpine bamboo. Then bathe in
the impossibly clear waters of the world’s longest, second-deepest
and least-polluted freshwater lake – harbouring an estimated 1,000
fish species - before returning as you came, by boat.
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