Mahale Mountains National Park
A client's experience:
After five days of cats and the plains game we hired a plane for our two hour flight to Mahale Mountains National Park on Lake Tanganyika.
We were met by the camp manager and put on a dhow which had been hand crafted out of hard wood by a boat maker from Zanzibar. The dhow is a classic- with white cushions and a cool box full of beers and gin and tonics. So we head of on our one and a half hour cruise down Lake Tanganyika to camp, hearing stories of chimp sightings and drinking cold beers. The water is crystal clear and has an azure look to it with vast jungle and mountains jutting out of the water to over 7500 feet.
Finally we enter an isolated bay with a huge white sandy beach, massive mountains behind and Ottoman style tents on the beach. It is absolute paradise. The main dining tent and bar is like something out of Lawrence of Arabia with the client’s tents (six only) set off in the palm trees. They have simple loos and showers but also provide biodegradable soap and shampoo so you can wash in the lake. The lake temperature is constantly 25 degrees Celsius so it's perfect bath temp.
A good lunch and everyone is eager to head off into the forest to spot chimps.
The forest is astounding. It's a child-hood dream of Tarzan and the perfect African jungle. Palms, vines and a huge variety of tropical rain forest plants with brightly colored birds and butterflies flitting through the undergrowth. Monkeys everywhere - red colobus, vervet, black and white colobus and yellow baboons.
After about two hours of very humid walking, up and down mountain paths, we find two chimps hanging around in a tree, and then some females with young. It’s unbelievable as they are so habituated to humans (the Japanese have been studying them for twenty five years) that we are not even noticed. It’s hard to put on paper the experience of just sitting within meters of a bunch of chimps going about their daily activities. You can really see how closely related to chimps we are as all the body language is identical to humans (we share 98.6% of our genes with chimps) - in fact I know a few people that don't even rate up there!
Two hours goes by as if it was a minute and we watch the chimps build their night nests high in the trees. It takes them about three minutesto construct a stable platform and they are then happily embedded for the night.
Armed with organic shampoo I have the most amazing bath in Lake Tanganyika under the stars, the half moon and fires on the far hills of Zaire. A great campfire and dinner on the beach in the ottoman mess tent, a scotch before bed listening to the waves crashing on the beach and watching the moon setting across the lake - it's a good life!
I'm awakened at 6:30 am with hot coffee brought to the tent, have a quick walk along the beach with my coffee and binoculars and spot two bushbuck on the beach who wander over to check me out. I also saw lots of otter prints in the sand.
Breakfast and a two hour walk had us back amongst the chimps. There are about fifty chimps in this group, the only habituated group of the thousand or so chimps at Mahale. We sat with about fifteen females some with tiny babies all playing and grooming each other. We sat taking in all the sights and sounds of the forest. Four huge males moved out of the forest and blissfully groomed each other on the path ten feet from us, all giving all manner of photographic poses. We found a female that was in heat so it was creating all sorts of excitement. The alpha male was constantly charging around telling ever other male in the area to piss off. So all the outcasts became moody, throwing rocks and branches about and screaming their heads off. The alpha male also decided that myself and two of the clients I was with were a threat to his domain so he charged down the hill at us, screaming bloody murder and picked up a huge log and throwing it at us. It missed so he just stood a few feet away and beat his chest and looked me in the eye. Never make full eye contact with chimp, always look away so that he feels he is dominant (it's the same theory when confronting a gang member with a knife on the subway.) A big male chimp weighs about 60 kgs but has the strength of 3 human beings. It was a great adrenaline moment and totally awesome experience.
After all that excitement it was back to the lake for a swim and a well deserved late lunch.
Our afternoon turned out to be all excitement as well. We took the dhow for an afternoon fishing and cruising along the lake. We caught about twenty fish to be consumed later. As we were fishing a pied kingfisher was also out fishing, but for the last time. The bird dove into the lake to grab a fish, as it caught it and tried to fly off with it an otter leapt out of the water and grabbed the bird and the fish - amazing. Next came two hippos, one swam under the dhow in crystal clear water. After all this excitement we took off for a bit of snorkeling around some rocks with about fifty species of cichlids and red colobus monkeys jumping around on the shore.
While we had been snorkeling the crew had prepared sushi from the fish we had caught so we cruised back eating raw fish and drinking cold beers while watching the sun set over the Congo. Life is great!
Our next destination was Ruaha………