Mahale Mountains National Park

The Mahale Mountains National Park is one of the most beautiful parks anywhere in Africa. This part of Lake Taganyika is characterized by deserted sandy beaches, crystal clear water and an incredible backdrop of towering forested mountains. The forests are home to one of the highest number of primate species of any park in Tanzania (beaten only by the Udzungwa Mountains), including nearly 1,000 chimpanzees.

Mahale Mountains was gazetted as a national park in 1985. The park extends over an area of 1,613km squared, extending from the lakeshore at 773m a.s.l to the Nkungwe Peak at an impressive 2,462m. You can climb to the summit in a long and tiring day's hike from one of the camps, more than worth it for the views.

The main attraction in Mahale is the opportunity to track a wild chimpanzee community, which along with their counterparts in Gombe, have been habituated to humans. In 1965 a permanent research camp was set up by a team of Japanese primatologists, continuing to this day.

There are eight other primate species recorded in the park. Those that are likely to be seen include olive baboons, red colobus, vervet, blue and red-tailed monkeys. An endemic race of Angola black-and-white coloubus may be encountered in the montane forests of the higher slopes. The two species of galago are nocturnal, so you may hear them rather than see them. More than 230 birds have been recorded in the park including a variety of king-fishers, weavers, bee-eaters and hornbills.

In addition to trekking, swimming and snorkeling, visitors can go fishing with locals or trace the local Tongwe people's ancient pilgrimage to the mountain spirits, trekking through enclaves of rain forest to grassy ridges chequered with alpine bamboo.

The dryer inland eastern slopes of Mahale support species such as lion, elephant, African hunting dog, roan antelope and giraffe to name a few. But the only species likely to be seen by visitors is the warthog.

How do I to get to Mahale?

Luxury travellers may fly into Mahale from Arusha for about $930 each way. For budget travelers the cheapest way to get to Mahale is on the MV Liemba. The Liemba runs from Kigoma to Zambia stopping at Mahale.

The ferry leaves Kigoma on Wednesdays at around 4pm, arriving at Magambo (Lagosa) village at around 2am. The leaving times vary as does the traveling. It has been known to take 24hrs to get to Magambo. We will let TANAPA know in advance if you need the TANAPA speedboat to meet you, otherwise you have to take your chances with getting a lift on the little dugout canoes (not advised!). It is then an hour and a half boat ride to the park headquarters at Bilenge where you pay park fees.

The habituated chimp group (group M) live in the Kasoge forest. Each morning trackers set out to locate the chimps and then radio the guides at Kasiha to let them know their exact location. The walk to the chimps can take between 30mins and 2 hours. If the chimp group is too high up in the mountains then tourists won't be taken to see them as the walk is too long and demanding. Being able to see the chimps is not guaranteed! There are well defined paths through the forest and the chimps are often found on or close to one of these paths. When they are off of the main tracks the guides have pangas to cut their way through the bush.

All tourists visiting Mahale will receive a briefing from their guide on chimp etiquette and be given paper masks which have to be worn when visiting the chimps to prevent the spread of disease. Only a few of the guides speak good English, but most of them have a reasonable understanding. All the guides carry hand held radios. Chimp viewing groups are limited to 6 people and tourists are only allowed to view the chimps for one hour. There are plans to introduce a booking system for chimp viewing with visitors having to book a viewing slot in advance. At the moment the guides try to coordinate it so that only one group at a time is with the chimps, but it maybe that there will be two groups viewing at the same time. Also there will usually be some of the Japanese researchers with the chimps at all times.

For the return journey, for those not flying, the Liemba leaves Magambo late Saturday evening or in the early hours of Sunday morning, but again there can be delays of up to 24 hours. TANAPA normally have a speedboat going to Magambo and can let you know at time the ferry is due.

Contact us directly and our field staff will help you design your own personal Tanzania safari.

Thanks to Kirsten Skinner for the use of her photographs and information on this page.