Lake Kivu: An Ideal destination for Sunbathing Lovers

Lake Kivu is one of the major lakes of Africa. It is located along the border between Congo and Rwanda, in the Albertine western Rift, and a portion of the Great Rift Valley. Lake Kivu pours into the Ruzizi River, which flows southward into Lake Tanganyika. It is a beautiful Inland Sea enclosed by steep, green hills. Its shores are surrounded by three towns: Gisenyi, Kibuye and Cyangugu which are an ideal stopping point to Relax, Swim, or take a Boat Excursion past the small Lakeside Villages that offer a rewarding glimpse of rural life. The world’s tenth biggest Inland Island lies in Lake Kivu as well, with Villages along its shore including Kalehe, Bukavu, Kabare, Sake and Goma in DRC Congo as well as Gisenyi, Kibuye and Cyangugu in Rwanda. Kivu offers a variety of fish species like Clarias, Barbus, Haplochromis and Nile Tilapia.

For Sunbathing, swimming and water sports, speedboats, canoe sailing, or just mountain walks and picnics, Kibuye will provide these facilities to your satisfaction.

There are lovely villas along the tree-lined shore…a beautiful white sandy beach…Kivu is crystal clear. This is a spot that deserves a longer stay.” Gisenyi, the most developed of these resorts, lies less than an hour’s drive from the Volcanoes National Park, (natural habitat of the rare mountain Gorillas), and is set on a sandy beach lined with swaying palms and colonial-era hotels that exude an atmosphere of tropical languor.

At Kibuye, to its south, tourist activities are centred on a modem lakeshore guesthouse overlooking pine-covered hills seemingly transplanted from the Alps. Different again is Cyangugu, close to Nyungwe Forest (Nyungwe National Park since 2005), whose more subdued tourist development is compensated for by a stirring setting of curving inlets

winding into narrow valleys. Lake Kivu is the largest of numerous freshwater bodies that shimmer in the valleys of Rwanda. Lakes Burera and Ruhondo, close to the gorilla-tracking centre of Ruhengeri, are oft-neglected gems, deep blue waters ringed by steep hills and tall waterfalls, with the nearby Virunga Volcanoes providing a spectacular backdrop.

Apart from being an attraction to tourists, Lake Kivu has been discovered to contain almost 55 billion cubic meters of liquefied methane gas at of 300 ms (about 1,000 ft into deep). Till 2004, extraction of the gas was practiced on a small scale, with the distilled gas being used for running boilers at a brewery, the Bralirwa found in Gisenyi. Rwandan government is in negotiations with a few parties as far as large-scale exploitation of this resource is concerned, to produce methane from the lake.