Mashyuza Hot Springs (Cyangugu)

Mashyuza Hot Springs is a natural thermal site in the Rubavu area near Cyangugu (Rusizi) in western Rwanda, where oligomineral-geothermal waters emerge in the volcanic landscape above Lake Kivu — one of Africa's Great Lakes shared between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, remarkable for the extraordinary concentration of dissolved carbon dioxide and methane gas at depth that has made the lake the subject of global research and a source of commercial methane energy extraction. The springs, associated with the volcanic activity of the Virunga volcanic chain that runs from northwest Rwanda into Congo and Uganda, are used for simple therapeutic bathing by local communities in a border region whose complex history of conflict, displacement, and recent remarkable recovery is embodied in Rwanda's transformation from the 1994 genocide to one of Africa's most stable and rapidly developing nations. The setting near Rusizi and the Congo-Rwanda border, overlooking the blue expanse of Lake Kivu framed by green volcanic hills, provides one of Rwanda's most beautiful natural landscapes for the thermal spring experience.