Tanzania
Rubondo Island National Park
Chimpanzees from a 1960s experiment still hold a forested island in Lake Victoria.
The island is all forest to the waterline, papyrus bays and sandy coves around the edge, and in the trees a chimpanzee population descended from a 1960s conservation experiment that nobody quite repeated.
Rubondo protects an entire Lake Victoria island, 457 square kilometres of equatorial forest, papyrus wetland and lakeshore, stocked in the 1960s by Bernhard Grzimek's conservation experiment with chimpanzees, elephants and giraffes whose descendants remain. Sitatunga wade the bays, fish eagles work the water, and the flagship camp bakes its own bread and closes for the April-May rains, the June-to-September dry season carrying the visits. Almost nobody comes, which the island wears well.
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · Powered by Geoapify
Solo
Self-reliant solo travellers can choose ranger walks or camp activities after securing difficult island transport and food arrangements.
Couple
Couples can alternate forest, beach and boat time without making introduced chimpanzees the measure of success.
- A 1960s conservation experiment stocked the island; the descendants remain.
- The park covers an entire forested Lake Victoria island.
- Sitatunga wade the papyrus bays at the forest's edge.
- June to September is the dry, open season.
Rubondo Island Camp bakes its own bread, cakes and sorbets, deck breakfasts over the water.
Breakfast is taken on the deck over the water, the camp's own baking on the table.
Abaiang
Kiribati
At high tide the sea surrounds Tebunginako's church; the village choir times services around it.
Abbotsbury
England
A swannery where six hundred mute swans nest in reed beds behind the Chesil Bank.
Abel Tasman National Park
New Zealand
Golden bays between forested headlands, reached only on foot, by kayak or water taxi.
Aberdaron
Wales
A church on the sand where pilgrims ate their last meal before the island crossing.
Bagamoyo
Tanzania
The enslaved named this port 'lay down your heart,' and its coral lanes remember.
Bukoba
Tanzania
The Haya smelted carbon steel on this lakeshore two thousand years ago.
Chole Island
Tanzania
Banyan roots strangle abandoned merchant houses the forest never gave back.
Empakaai Crater
Tanzania
Flamingos scatter pink across a crater lake, with Lengai smoking on the horizon.