Mahale & Katavi

Mahale Mountains National Park

Mahale Mountains National Park is without doubt one of Africa’s most beautiful parks. It is located on the edge of Lake Tanganyika in the west of the country.

It is generally around 6,000 feet high with accompanying high rainfall so the best time to visit is in the drier months, normally May to September.

The park is made up of montane forests and grasslands, along with small pockets of alpine bamboo.

Mahale is most famous for being a chimpanzee sanctuary with an estimated 1,000 chimpanzees living here in around 20 family groups and even though access to the park is only by aeroplane and boat, the allure of seeing chimpanzees in the wild is enough to tempt many visitors to the region.

As well as chimps, there are eight other primate species:

• red colobus
• red-tailed monkey
• blue monkey
• vervet monkey
• yellow baboon
• Angola black-and-white colobus
• lesser galago
• thick-tailed greater galago

Primates aside, the brush-tailed porcupine and giant forest squirrel are another two interesting species found here.

Katavi National Park

Close to Lake Tanganyika is Katavi National Park.

This lovely and extremely remote park has very few visitors mainly owing to its isolation and lack of facilities but those willing to make the journey here will be rewarded with a really sensational safari experience.

The vegetation is a mixture of miombo woodland, acacia parkland, grassland plains and swamps surrounding the Katuma River, which joins the park’s two lakes, Katavi and Chada.

During the rainy season (light rains in November and heavier rains in April and May) it is probably best avoided as the game disperses into the woodland, temperatures soar, humidity escalates and mosquitoes come out in their droves, not the best combination of factors for a successful safari!

A flourishing habitat for a plethora of game

During the dry season, the story is quite different. The wildlife is incredible – great numbers of elephant, buffalo (which congregate in 1,000 strong herds) zebra, giraffe, hartebeest, topi, impala, reedbuck and Defassa waterbuck along with a prolific lion population and plenty of spotted hyena and leopard.

The rivers support an astonishing number and density of hippos and some seriously large crocodiles.

Water birds are wonderful here. There are pink-backed pelicans, yellow-billed and open-billed storks, African spoonbills and great numbers of herons, egrets and plovers.

Elsewhere in the park, such exotic sounding gems as the sulphur-breasted bush shrike, the paradise flycatcher and the African golden oriole can be found.

One resident of the park that its visitors are not so keen to see is the irritating tsetse fly.

Luckily, their distribution is restricted to the woodlands away from the more popular game-viewing areas on the floodplains.