Merry Chimp-mas

Three years ago, I spent Christmas morning in a surgical mask in the middle of a dripping tropical forest with a chimpanzee named Christmas. The dominant male sat with arms crossed and eyes fixed on the curious strangers sitting among his family. Then he exploded and rushed us.

A black blur, he quickly closed the 20-metre gap between us, pausing briefly on his warpath to scoop up a log and hurl it, narrowly missing us.

My arms reached out for Butati, our slim and smiley guide (whom I had a good six inches and probably 20 pounds on). If the chimps try anything funny, grab me – or a tree, he'd instructed us on the hike in. Hunched over, I buried my face in his polo shirt, afraid to look at Christmas as he thrashed about at our feet, tossing up earth the way an overzealous child rips off wrapping paper. It was easily the most comforting Christmas-morning hug I'd ever had.

We'd reached Mahale Mountains National Park on Christmas Eve after a long journey from Dar es Salaam. This remote park on Tanzania's western edge gets few visitors – despite having some of the best wild-chimpanzee viewing in Africa.

Perhaps this is because while Tanzania invests considerably in tourism infrastructure for its more famous hot spots – the Serengeti, Mount Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar – remote gems like Mahale get short shrift. Or maybe it's because there are no roads into Mahale, so getting there is either expensive or complicated.

After landing in Kigoma, a town 130 kilometres north of Mahale, we boarded a bus that would get us about halfway to the park. It was full to bursting with people headed home for the holidays – students, babies, elders – and we seemed to be the only foreigners on the bus.

We piled onto an already-crammed back seat and giggled and groaned for five hours as relentless potholes liberated us time and again from our seats. We listened as people chattered excitedly in Swahili about their holiday plans. Outside the sun danced on Lake Tanganyika while thousands of dagaa, tiny silver sardines, lay drying in neat, red earthen grids.

Our bus reached the end of the line in Sigunga, an off-grid village where we quickly booked what was apparently the only guesthouse around. It also happened to be the only home on the waterfront. The sky over the lake was filled with stars, and the night was quiet.

During the day we joined men under a covered area in the centre of the village for some bao, a highly addictive traditional Swahili game, while giggling children peppered us with "how are yous." Our host invited us to join his family for meals of dagaa with garlic and tomatoes, served with ugali, a stiff porridge. We ripped off small chunks of ugali, squeezing it into little dough bowls, then scooped the salty, saucy fish into our mouths, all the while making obnoxious noises.

Around mid-afternoon, full of fish and gratitude, we began to doubt whether the park workers who told us they'd be swinging by Sigunga in their speedboat that day would, in fact, show. Police at the one-horse station let us use their satellite phone to call our guy. He said yes, they'd still be doing a supply run, and yes, we could still catch a ride with them to Mahale. Incredibly, our patchwork plans were still on track.

It was hard to leave Sigunga, but we knew there was a forest full of chimps just around the corner, so we loaded into the government boat, piled high with boxes of cooking oil and toilet paper.

Ripping across Lake Tanganyika at breakneck speed toward the misty mountains of Mahale while the sun dips ever lower should be on everyone's bucket list. When we finally pulled up to the dock, the only signs of life were the light from a single dangling bulb and the animals calling to each other in the dark. We were the only guests staying at the government camp.

And we were hungry, but the violent bus ride had beaten up our food supply pretty badly. We managed to salvage a couple of mangoes and whipped up a curry. It was a simple, delicious meal, complemented by the candlelit emptiness of the communal kitchen and the sounds of the birds and the baboons.

We slept soundly in the government bandas (cozy cabins that make for cheap alternatives to the few luxury beach camps) and awoke ready to run into the forest. Our guide, Butati Nyundo, was the total package. The son of a guide, he answered all our questions easily and spoke affectionately about the trees and their wildlife. But his best move was when he caught a chunky tsetse fly (which can spread the potentially fatal African sleeping sickness) between his fingernails. Or maybe it was his pitch-perfect chimpanzee imitations. Tough call.

In Mahale, you hear the chimps before you see them. It took about 45 minutes of easy hiking before we heard the first coo. The feeling you get when you first hear chimps in the wild is like that moment when you're six and you've just staggered sleepy-eyed into the living room to find a stack of presents under a twinkling tree: awesome in the truest sense of the word.

Seeing them is no less thrilling. Anyone with a shred of maternal instinct will cringe at the sight of babies flinging themselves off high branches while mothers and sisters scramble to grab their wonderfully familiar wrinkly hands and yank them back up. As observers, we had a golden rule to mind: remain at least 10 metres away from the chimps at all times. But this can prove challenging. At any given moment, the chimps' gentle chatter can erupt into loud vocalizations known as pant-hoots, and suddenly this family of 60-plus chimps is barrelling through the bush, grazing your bare legs as they scamper by. We were assured by Butati that, outside of the rare stone toss (or frenzied rushing of terrified tourists), these chimpanzees largely ignore humans.

While there are more than 1,500 chimps in Mahale, according to Mahale researcher Koichiro Zamma, only two chimp communities have been habituated to humans, including the 65 that make up "M-group," to which Christmas belongs. Japanese researchers from Kyoto University began familiarizing M-group to humans more than 50 years ago, through offerings of bananas and sugarcane, while further up Lake Tanganyika, Jane Goodall was digging her heels into Gombe National Park.

In Mahale, the late pioneering researcher Toshisada Nishida led his team to uncover some interesting similarities between chimps and humans, such as their propensity for using tools to dig up food (termites) and their crafty use of medicinal plants to relieve themselves of various woes including constipation or diarrhea.

As our one-hour viewing period came to an end, Butati peeled us off the forest floor, and we grudgingly followed him out of the forest, back to the beach, where we consoled ourselves by finding a leafy plant to decorate with the Christmas baubles my friend had thoughtfully lugged along from Germany. (Amazingly, they'd survived the bus ride.)

We searched, unsuccessfully, along the shoreline for crocodile tracks, then chilled for a while with Butati. Sometimes the chimps come down to the beach, he told us. And so we sat, waiting for our closest relatives to make another holiday appearance.

They never showed. Miffed – why must we always go to them? – we trekked into the forest for another visit the next morning. And then we retraced our steps back out – through the forest, down the lake, over the green open spaces of Tanzania and back to the organized chaos of our own lives, where hardly a stone gets thrown but there's always occasion for a hearty pant-hoot.

If you go

Mahale Mountains National Park is accessible year round, but if you'd like to combine chimp trekking with some beach chilling, it's best to visit in the dry season (June to October). Wet season visitors might enjoy some fantastic lightning storms. Park fees are $80 (U.S.) a day for non-residents of Tanzania.

Tanzania's official languages are Swahili and English. The currency is the Tanzania shilling – however, you are advised to carry U.S. dollars, too. Canadians need a visa, which can be obtained in advance through the High Commission (recommended) or at the airport upon arrival in Dar es Salaam (hectic), to visit. See a travel doctor for vaccination advice.

Getting there

From Kigoma, the most expensive option is to take a small plane to the park. Alternatively you can catch the MV Liemba, an old German gunboat from the First World War that has been repurposed as a ferry – providing your schedule aligns with its weekly journey down the impressively long Lake Tanganyika. You can try to snag a spot on a cargo ship from Kigoma or charter a private (and pricey) boat. Or you can combine a bumpy bus ride down the lake's eastern shoreline with some speedboat-hitchhiking.

Where to stay

If you can afford to stay at one of the park's luxury safari camps, Greystoke or Kugwe, these private tour operators will take care of the tricky travel logistics for you. Over Christmas, Greystoke will run you upwards of $1,200 a night for an environmentally mindful beach camp. At Kungwe Beach Lodge, three-night packages (which include a return flight from Arusha) start at $3,700 a person. Travellers on a tighter budget should consider reserving one of the modest government bandas (cabins) for around $40 a night.

Author Brielle Morgan will return to Mahale soon to see how wild chimpanzees ring in the New Year. She aims to meet with members of the Japanese research team and learn more about the Mahale community.