Chimpanzees rule the treetops of Tanzania's smallest national park, Gombe Stream, the real-life set of a Tarzan movie. Formed in 1968 to provide protection to its resident chimpanzees, Gombe Stream is an ideal place for camping, forest walks, wildlife interaction, and for studying primates. There are no roads, no phones, and no electricity in the malaria-infested Gombe Stream, but still, daredevils hunt it via Kigoma, a region connected to Dar-as-Salaam and Arusha through a slow rail or by scheduled flights.
Once in Kigoma, adventurers take taxis to reach the park's outskirts or hire motorboats to arrive in the sandy shores of Lake Tanganyika, Gombe's inland sea frequented by pied wagtails, sandpipers, palm nut vultures, and young baboons playing on the water. At dusk, wooden boats and their lanterns make the lake glow. There are campsites on the lakeshore, but the park also maintains its own tent-lodge and hostel.
The dry season of May to October is the best time for a stroll inside the thick Gombe forest, where echoes of chimpanzee shrieks accompany the sound of elephants, buffaloes, leopards, and over 200 species of birds. Fifi, the last surviving member of the original chimpanzee community studied by English scientist Jane Goodall, strikes tourists not only as a regular attraction but also as a representative of the longest-running behavioral research in the world.
Primates other than chimpanzees also make their regular "pant-hoot" calls while transferring themselves from one tree to another by hanging on the dangling vines. These primates include red colobus monkeys, blue monkeys, red-tailed monkeys, and beachcomber olive baboons that are willing to shake hands or to give humans a "High Five."