Kongo-Kinshasa: Aktivitäten und Erlebnisse

The country takes in much of the Congo Basin, the second-largest rainforest on Earth, and the Congo River, which loops through it, is the deepest river in the world. Kinshasa, the capital, stands on the south bank facing Brazzaville across the water, a vast city of music and street life. Lubumbashi, in the south-east, grew up around the copper mines of Katanga.

In the east, Goma lies on the northern shore of Lake Kivu at the foot of Nyiragongo, a volcano with a lava lake, near the Virunga mountains where mountain gorillas live. Elsewhere, the Salonga and Kahuzi-Biega national parks hold forest elephants, bonobos and gorillas, and the Inga rapids and Livingstone Falls drop through the river's last stretch towards the Atlantic.

Moambe chicken, cooked in a palm-nut sauce, and pondu, pounded cassava leaves with fish, are served with fufu, a stiff cassava or maize paste. Congolese rumba, which grew up in Kinshasa and Brazzaville, spread across Africa, and guitars and horns still carry down the streets. The south has a dry season from May to September, while near the equator rain falls in most months.