Lake Tanganyika Hot Springs

Lake Tanganyika Hot Springs in the Kigoma region of western Tanzania emerge from the deep geological faults of the East African Rift, the same system of fractures that created the world's second deepest lake — Lake Tanganyika at 1,470 metres maximum depth, containing more water than all the Great Lakes of North America combined. The sulphurous springs emerge both on shore and as submarine vents on the lakebed, detectable as warm zones in the clear lake water where bathing is possible in the shallows. Lake Tanganyika's extraordinary biodiversity — over 350 endemic cichlid fish species, hippos, crocodiles and the chimpanzee communities of the Gombe Stream where Jane Goodall made her legendary research — makes any thermal bathing experience here inseparable from one of Africa's greatest wildlife destinations. The dramatic escarpments of the Congo basin rise on the opposite shore, completing a landscape of extraordinary continental scale.