Gombe Stream National Park is situated in the western border of Tanzania, and is easily accessible by boat from Kigoma town which is 16 km to the south. With an area of only 52 sq km, Gombe National Park is one of the smallest National Parks in Tanzania, comprising a narrow strip of mountainous country bounded in the east by the crest of the Great Rift Valley escarpment, and in the west by Lake Tanganyika, the world’s longest and second deepest at 1400 meters deep.
Gombe Stream’s main attraction is obviously the chimpanzee families that live protected in the park’s boundaries. Guided walks are available that take visitors deep into the forest to observe and sit with the extraordinary primates for an entire morning — an incredible experience and one that is the highlight of many visitors’ trips to Africa. Besides chimpanzee viewing, many other species of primates live in Gombe Stream’s tropical forests. Vervet and colobus monkeys, baboons, forest pigs and small antelopes inhabit the dense forest, in addition to a wide variety of tropical birdlife.