After leaving Cyangugu we headed north to the town of Kibuye which is located half-way to Gisenyi up the east coast of Lake Kivu. Firstly we passed through miles of tea plantations:

George Orwell, a tea connoisseur, would have appreciated the beauty. He had firm ideas on A Nice Cup of Tea.

The road to Kibuye is unpaved, dusty, bumpy, curvy and full of spectacular vantage points of Lake Kivu hundreds of feet below.

I didn't take enough photos, and the photos I did take don't do the view justice. There were villages below nestled in the banana groves. We stopped at one point so the driver could fill his water bottles with healing water from a spring and again later to give out a few school supplies:

Often we slowed down to let cows - kept in line with the long sticks of their herders - pass safely by.

These cows, with their lyre-shaped horns, are a symbol of Rwanda, and specifically of the Tutsi cattle breeders who made up the majority of people living in this area before the 1994 genocide.

Not far from Kibuye, after our descent from the high hills, we came upon a brick-making factory, a source of all those red-brick-buildings all over Rwanda.

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HARNESS LAKE KIVU POWER