Chimpanzees

Updated: Pictures from Gombe. I uploaded them on flickr, which I'm not yet too familiar with, so I hope it works ok.

The trip to Gombe National Park went extremely well. We flew out to Kigoma on the 6th. Josh and I were immediately impressed with the town. Kigoma is quite small, but it's a nice, well-organized town that offered a lot of nice places to eat and drink. There are few tourists so none of these wasn't much catering to the tourist crowd, which was fine with us. We found a great bar right away where we got a good dinner of chips and goat meat. The next morning we asked around about information to get to the park and found we could hire a private boat for a ridiculous amount of money, or we could take the "lake taxi" which is basically a floating dala dala. This means that hundred or so people were piled in a small boat that puttered up the lake at around 5 mph. We got on just before it left so we were forced to settle amongst the cargo in the bottom of the boat. To let you know how packed it was, I counted 16 people who I could reach out and touch without stretching. Needless to say, it wasn't the most comfortable ride, but it got us to the park for a 2000 shillings, or less than two dollars.

We were dropped off at the park guest house, which has about six rooms and was empty when we arrived. On the boat with us were two girls from the University of Edinburgh and an Australian woman who's been travelling around East Africa. They had managed to book ahead of time, but we had not because the only way to communicate with the park is by radio. Fortunately, there was plenty of space. The house was located right on the lake shore and surrounded by the forests of the park. There were frequently baboons wandering around the house. Lake Tanganyika is extremely beautiful, and quite big. If I'm not mistaken it's the fifth largest freshwater lake in the world, and the second deepest (almost a mile in places). Very steep mountains come right out of the lake. The mountains are densely forested in the park, but unfortunately outside they've been stripped bare of trees. Deforestation is a problem all over this country. However, wherever you are the lake is gorgeous, and I will grudgingly admit I found the lake perhaps even more beautiful than my beloved Lake Victoria.

In the morning a park boat came down to the house and took us to the park entrance, perhaps three-quarters of a mile down the lake. When we got there, we paid the fees (getting the residence rate was a big bonus for us) and hired a guide. The way it works is you walk into the forest and hope to come across some chimps. If you do you are allowed to follow them around or sit near them for an hour or so, then you must move on and look for another group. You can't get too close because chimps are susceptable to human diseases. A TB outbreak a few years ago reduced their numbers by a third and now there are fewer than 100 chimps in the park.

When we set out into the woods I was immediately taken aback by how beautiful and unspoiled the forest was. Except for the trail, there was no sign of human activity. We quickly saw some baboons and a couple of kinds of monkeys (the park is quite thick with them). Of course, we were really waiting to see the chimps. We didn't have to wait too long. We'd been walking maybe 45 minutes when we stopped because we heard some crashing in the trees. We looked up and a huge male chimp came swinging down the tree and landed right in front of us. He was huge! I guess we don't usually think of chimps as that big because the ones you see and movies and things are pretty small, but this was a big dude. He had to weigh over 200 pounds. He started to walk down the path the way we had come. Quickly another chimp came down after him, then a mama chimp with a baby clinging to her and finally a juvenile. They all proceeded down the path and we followed them from a distance. The first two quickly went ahead out of site, but we were able to watch the mama and the two young ones pretty well. The baby rode on his mama's back while she walked down the trail. The others didn't pay too much attention too us, but the baby was extremely curious and kept peeking over his shoulder at us. It really was an incredible site. After awhile we let them move on and we turned to walk farther into the forest.

I quite enjoyed the walk through the woods. We went by a small building Jane Goodall had built to study the chimps from and then heard on the guide's radio that some of the research assistants in the park were watching another group feeding in the trees fairly close to us. We walked to where they were and sure enough, a mother with three children were in the tree eating. The oldest child looked almost fully grown, but the other two, who are twins, were quite young. They were way up in the canopy of the huge tree, so we could only see them from a distance and the view was often obscured, but we sat near the base of the tree and waited for them to come down. It was worth the wait.

The mother came down first and sat at the base of the tree waiting for the kids. We were actually quite close to her so we could watch her for awhile. She just sat there, looking up at the kids and waiting. After awhile of the twins came crashing down in reckless, youthful manner, I suppose. Finally the other twin came down, with his older sister helping him. She was encouraging him to go on his own but sometimes he would grab onto her for support. The most amazing thing was when the little one grabbed hold of her and she swung down a vine and passed maybe ten feet in front of me. Once they were all on the ground they went off somewhere else. Overall, we watched this group for about an hour. Other than occasional glances, the chimps barely seemed to notice our presence. We were extremely lucky to see two groups in the same day (before lunch!) and watching the chimps was amazing.

The rest of the day in the park was also nice, although we were done watching the chimps. There was a beautiful waterfall where we ate lunch, then we climbed to the top of a mountain they call Jane's Peak. From there the view of the park and the lake was amazing. At the end of it, we walked down the mountain to the park headquarters and sat in the shade by the lake having a beer. There were some mischevious baboons around and one came really close to snatching my bag away. Baboons are notorious for stealing peoples bags looking for food. On the Serengeti they're even known to jump into the vehicles.

Later on we went back to the house and had a swim in the lake, which was great. The house would be great to stay in just for the beach and walks through the woods. The next morning, we got back on the packed boat for the trip back to Kigoma. We spent the rest of the time in Kigoma just relaxing until our flight yesterday, and now I'm back in Dar for the moment. It was an amazing trip. I think I may have enjoyed it even more than the Serengeti because it's nice to be doing it all on foot instead of from a vehicle. It was also a lot cheaper to do, except for the plane tickets. Once you get to Kigoma, you can do what we did in the park for less than $100 per person, but it would be about $60 more for a non-resident. I definately would like to come and do this trip again.

This was quite a long post. I hope to put up pictures soon. It's a lot harder to photograph the chimps than it was lions, elephants, and giraffes, etc. because you had to shoot through the trees and because they were also moving quite quickly much of the time. I'm hoping I have a few good shots though. If you want to know more, here's a link to Gombe.