AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Tourists perch on a volcano’s edge as smoke swirls from the fiery cauldron of lava in the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Molten rock spurts into the air as one of the world’s largest lava lakes and most active volcanos puts on its mesmerizing show.
Eastern DRC has been mired for decades in rebel battles, but such sights are helping bring back tourists to Virunga National Park, which reopened in 2014 as violence receded.
Mount Nyiragongo, which is 3,470 meters tall, is part of a chain of volcanoes in one of the world’s most active regions. Hills that surround the 7,800-square-kilometer park are home to a quarter of the world’s critically endangered mountain gorillas. Tourism — needed to keep the UNESCO world heritage site running and its animal inhabitants safe — collapsed in 2012.
Militia forces remain active, and Virunga’s chief warden, Emmanuel de Merode, himself was wounded by gunmen by 2014. But the well-trained and armed guides say it is now safe, and visitors are coming back.
Tourism revenue benefits the 4 million people in and around the park, as well as “peace and prosperity” in general, Merode said. It gives people an alternative to cutting down forests for charcoal, and a motivation to protect the park.
In 2011, more than 3,000 visitors came to Virunga, but violence forced the park to shut the next year. It fully reopened in late 2014. Tourist numbers have bounced back, with almost 3,000 visiting as of August 2015. The Oscar-nominated 2014 documentary Virunga, which showed efforts to protect Africa’s oldest national park from war, poachers and oil companies, also has brought back tourists.
As night falls and temperatures drop below freezing, the warmth from the molten lava warms the hands of the tourists, who dangle their legs over the sheer drop into the crater.
“I saw how the Earth was born,” one entry from an American couple read in the park’s visitor’s book. “How often can you climb a mountain and come back with an understanding of how we are all here?”