Page 60 - Volcano and Geothermal Tourism

Africa’s Great Volcanoes of the Albertine Rift Valley 37

Figure 2.2 The major volcanoes of the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Nyiragongo and Nyamulagira, located to the
north and north-north-east of Goma
Source: USGS, 2000 (map modified by author)

African continent. The park achieved its present deep in central Africa, with the Nile flowing out
borders in 1969, and was the first wildlife sanctuary of springs to be found in the Lunaes Montes
to acquire world heritage status in DRC (in (Mountains of the Moon).
1984). Its 800,000ha of lands were also designated Among the many 19th century explorers who
a Ramsar site in 1996 (Diallo, 1975; Boaz et al, scrambled for the Lunaes Montes, H. M. Stanley
1992; Charlier, 1998). was the first to get the glimpse of their shining
peaks – quite accidentally, because of the mist that
Ruwenzori range: The Mountains almost permanently covers them. He located them
of the Moon on the map of Africa in 1885. Ruwenzori, the
The quest for the source of the Nile had been an legendary ‘Mountains of the Moon’, were thus
enigma that had eluded explorers since Homer’s ‘discovered’. This mountain range (Figure 2.4),
time (c. 850BC). Around 100BC Hipparchus drew which stretches over an area 120km long and
a map of Africa showing the Nile as flowing out 65km wide consists of a set of six massifs separated
of three big lakes just north of the equator. by deep ravines, among which Mt Stanley (with
Ptolemy (c. 100AD) improved the information by Peak Margherita, 5119m), Mt Speke (4890m) and
placing the lakes just south of the equator and Mt Baker (4843m) are the highest, and at the same

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