Trekking With Chimps, Facing Elephants, Lions: Tanzania Travel
Step by step the guide's machete is clearing a path in front of us through the dense tropical forest in the remote mountains of western Tanzania. Our clothes stick to our skin since we've been climbing uphill for an hour in the 90- degree heat.
We steer off the narrow path up the mountain, and the thick, 6-foot brush engulfs us with the heavy smell of moist soil and lush grass as we slowly put one foot in front of the next.
Sixtus, the local guide, signals us to pause. A park ranger, my husband and I listen intently to the buzzing and humming from insects and birds. Then we hear the familiar shouts nearby: OOOooo, AAAaaa.
Suddenly a screaming chimpanzee male, demonstrating his ability to use a tool, darts toward us through the brush with a stick in his hand. The four of us quickly scurry out of his path to avoid a collision.
``He's showing off,'' Sixtus says. ``He is trying to become the alpha male.''
We are in Mahale, a remote region visited by about 200 people a year and home to an estimated 700 chimps. The area, on the eastern shore of 400-mile-long Lake Tanganyika, lies just south of Gombe, a place that gained popularity through Jane Goodall's work there with chimpanzees. Trekking with great apes is just one adventure a safari in East Africa has to offer.
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By Nadja Brandt
Dec. 14 (Bloomberg)
Trekking With Chimps, Facing Elephants, Lions: Tanzania Travel
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