Add the beaches of Lake Kivu to Roz Carr’s Gardens and get a more complete picture of the beautiful lands Rosamond Halsey Carr loved so much. Known as “the Kivus” in her day, this area was expatriate society’s playground, full of colourful characters she chronicled in “Land of a Thousand Hills”.
You can still see the building Roz used as a temporary orphanage when Mugongo became unsafe, and walk all the way to where Rwanda’s Gisenyi turns into Congo’s Goma. These two towns were very much part of her life with Kenneth Carr (pictured below), who remained a friendly presence after their amicable divorce.
The tour’s title borrows from the Circuit de Bugoyi, a scenic route through Rwanda and the Belgian Congo. Bugoyi was the name of a province of the Rwandan kingdom, but the royal link goes further: Belgian King Baudouin drove some of these roads himself in 1956.
Highlights
• get picked up from your hotel by a knowledgeable guide in a comfortable vehicle
• hear Roz Carr’s life story as you navigate the rural road right beneath the Virunga volcanoes, or talk through the details if you’ve read the book recently
• visit the museum covering the orphanage she founded after the genocide and her previous pyrethrum business, built on a natural insecticide
• pay tribute to Roz at her grave, accompanied by staff members who knew her personally
• laze by the fireplace with her photo albums and books in hand, in the creeper-clad house where she lived
• treat yourself to a tasty lunch in the open air of the Mugongo gardens
• walk along the beautiful Gisenyi beach, past Roz’s emergency orphanage location and on to the border with DR Congo
• delight in a superb fish dinner
• optional: add a stop at the Ellen DeGeneres Campus in Kinigi to dive into Dian Fossey’s legacy and the years she shared with Roz
Facts
duration: full day
area: Musanze/Kinigi to Lake Kivu
start: daily at 9am
price per person:
8+ people: USD 150
6–7 people: USD 170
4–5 people: USD 190
2–3 people: USD 235
1 person: USD 430
included: transport, guiding, entrances, two meals, tips and contributions
excluded: Ellen Campus entry (optional)
Vegetarian, vegan and other dietary preferences can be catered to.
You are reading one of our growing number of day experiences in Rwanda and Uganda. Click for an overview of these experiences or check out our multi-day treks.
Itinerary
It takes about an hour and a half to get from Musanze to Roz Carr’s home, using the murram road under the volcanoes. The ride is a great opportunity to chat about Roz’s personal history and the grand African adventure that turned into her life’s mission.
SIDE NOTE: If you’d like to check out the Ellen Campus, this is the time and place to do it.
The conversation gains a visual layer the moment you reach the museum. Its displays evoke the pyrethrum era and the orphanage years, the two best-known chapters of Roz’s work.
But the site’s uniqueness only becomes clear as you walk towards the old house: everything here is preserved just the way she left it. You are free to wander through her gardens and even her home, and to get cosy by the fireplace. It’s easy to see why Mugongo drew visitors from near and far during her lifetime.
Roz passed away in 2006, and you will visit her grave, tucked away in a pretty grove, together with a staff member who still remembers her. The children she helped are grown-ups now, working with international friends to keep Roz Carr’s legacy alive.
Weather permitting, your lunch will be served outside in the gardens, on Roz’s own china. The delicious mix of Rwandan and European flavours captures the spirit of the place: creatively bringing together the local and the global to build a better future for all.
It’s up to you to tell us when exactly to embark on the rest of the tour and join the highway to Gisenyi. The town is only about 45 minutes away, and there’s so much to enjoy in Roz’s private library; reading “Land of a Thousand Hills: My Life in Rwanda” here affects you differently. (Will you leave with a brand-new copy of the book? If you already own it, why not buy one for family or friends and pass the story on?)
Once you are in Gisenyi, the wider dimension of Roz’s African decades reveals itself. Across Lake Kivu rise the mountains of DR Congo; somewhere over there, she spent years running the Buniole plantation.
Our guide will take you on a 30-minute stroll to the border, a walk through space and time. For example, you will be shown the former site of the Palm Beach Hotel (where Roz tried to make ends meet) and the emergency orphanage location (where Bralirwa, Rwanda’s leading brewery, hosted the children when Mugongo was unsafe; the building is in the archive image above).
We don’t know exactly where Roz first saw Lake Kivu and had her breath taken away, but it could well have been somewhere here. We do know, on the other hand, where we would like you to have dinner with a lake view: at Roxy, the masters of fish preparation.
The ride back to Musanze lasts about 1.5 hours, all on perfect tarmac.
photos by Miha Logar; archive images courtesy of Ann Halsey
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