Gombe Stream National Park

Location: Eastern Shores of Lake Tanganyika, Tanzania

Gombe Stream is the smallest national park, spanning over 14sq miles on the eastern shores of Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania, along the remote western safari circuit alongside Katavi National Park and Mahale Mountains National Park. The western Safari Circuit borders four countries and Lake Tanganyika is shared between Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Tanzania and Zambia and is the longest freshwater lake in the world.

Gombe is one of the three places where you may see chimpanzees in Tanzania and is home to many rare primates alongside chimpanzees with an approx. 150 chimpanzees live in the park including other primate species like olive baboons, red colobus, red-tailed monkeys, blue monkeys, and vervet monkeys. The parks diverse topography comprises of vast grasslands, dense woodland area, tropical rain forest, bisected by steep valleys, rivers and streams of water.

Famous as a site where Jane Goodall completed most of her pioneering chimpanzee research, many of the chimpanzee troops here are habituated, and you can trek to see them-up close in their natural forest habitat. Birds, butterflies, a wide variety of rare forest flora which can be spotted during forest walks and chimpanzee treks. Gombe has no large predators except occasional sightings of the leopard.

The sandy beaches stare across the grassy blue waters to the horizon and the great expanse of water appears more like an ocean than a freshwater lake. Perfect for a beach holiday after trekking through the forest. The park is accessible from Dar es Salaam daily by scheduled flight to Kigoma which take approx. 2 hours and from Arusha, shared charter flights are available twice a week.

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