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2-Day Gombe Chimpanzee Trek
A short trip from Kigoma to Tanzania's smallest park — the lakeshore forest where Jane Goodall began her chimpanzee study...
Tanzania's smallest park at 52 km² — the strip of lakeshore forest where Jane Goodall began her chimpanzee study in 1960, still one of the longest-running wildlife research projects on Earth.
Gazetted in 1968 and covering only 52 square kilometres, Gombe is a narrow band of forest on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika, north of Kigoma. It is famous as the site where Jane Goodall began observing wild chimpanzees in 1960 — research that continues today and fundamentally changed how science understands tool use, social behaviour and our own species.
The park's roughly 100 chimpanzees live in habituated communities, and trekking to find them follows steep forest trails. Olive baboons, red-tailed and red colobus monkeys, and a good range of forest and lake birds are also present. Visits are usually short — a day or two from Kigoma by boat — and are increasingly combined with the historical sights of the Kigoma area and, for those going further, Mahale to the south.
Things To Do
The core of every safari — tracking wildlife across the parks in a pop-top or open-sided…
Tanzania has over 1,100 recorded bird species — from the flamingos of the Rift Valley lakes…
Tracking wild chimpanzees in the forests of Mahale or Gombe on Lake Tanganyika — the birthplace…
