Rubondo Island National Park

Overview

A forested island in Africa's largest lake, where chimpanzees rescued from European zoos in the 1960s have re-wilded themselves so completely that tracking them is a genuine expedition.

Rubondo is a conservation experiment that quietly worked. Chimps, elephant, giraffe and black-and-white colobus were introduced onto a predator-light island; sitatunga, the swamp-dwelling antelope that swims, were already there in remarkable numbers. Sixty years on it functions as a working ecosystem and a sanctuary.

Almost nobody visits. You can walk, kayak the shoreline, fish for Nile perch, or track the chimpanzee habituation project with the researchers who run it. For travellers already in the Serengeti's western corridor, the flight over is short.

The landscape

Evergreen forest, papyrus swamp and open grassland across a long, low island fringed by sandy bays on Lake Victoria.