Experience the best of Kibuye

Kibuye, now named Karongi, sits on a peninsula on the eastern shore of Lake Kivu, one of the African Great Lakes, in the hills of western Rwanda. The lake has a long, indented shoreline of bays and wooded points, and small islands dot the water close to town. The shore has a few sandy beaches and shaded terraces for watching the sunset.

Boat trips run to the islands, where fruit bats hang in the trees on one of them, and the Congo Nile Trail follows the lake for more than two hundred kilometres between Rubavu and Rusizi. Tea plantations cover many hillsides nearby. Nyungwe Forest, a protected mountain rainforest, lies to the south, and the far shore of the lake lies in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Fried sambaza, tiny fish from Lake Kivu eaten whole, is the local snack, served with plantain and cassava, and brochettes of goat are grilled at roadside stalls. The altitude keeps temperatures pleasant, with cool nights. The drier months from June to September have the clearest light for lake views.