Mahale Mountains National Park, set deep in the heart of the African interior, inaccessible by road, but reachable by boat, traveling through the clear waters of the world’s longest, second-deepest and least-polluted freshwater lake, Lake Tanganyika, home to an estimated 1,000 fish species.

The Mahale National Park, 1,613 sq km (623 sq miles) in area,  is only 100km (60 miles) south of where Stanley uttered that immortal greeting “Doctor Livingstone, I presume”.

Mahale Mountains are home to some of Africa’s last remaining wild chimpanzees, roughly 800, habituated to human visitors by a Japanese research project founded in the 1960s.

Tracking the chimps of Mahale is a magical experience. The guide's eyes pick out last night's nests - shadowy clumps high in a gallery of trees crowding the sky. Scraps of half-eaten fruit and fresh dung become valuable clues, leading deeper into the forest. Butterflies flit in the dappled sunlight.

The area is also known as Nkungwe, after the park's largest mountain, held sacred by the local Tongwe people, and at 2,460 metres (8,069 ft) the highest of the six prominent points that make up the Mahale Range.

And while chimpanzees are the star attraction, the slopes support a diverse forest fauna, including readily observed troops of red colobus, red-tailed and blue monkeys, and a kaleidoscopic array of colorful forest birds.

You can trace the Tongwe people's ancient pilgrimage to the mountain spirits, hiking through the montane rainforest belt – home to an endemic race of Angola colobus monkey - to high grassy ridges chequered with alpine bamboo.