Journey to one of the hottest places on Earth
WE STUMBLED along in the darkness, the path a lighter grey amid the deep charcoal of the dried lava fields surrounding us. Up ahead was our goal, the dull, angry, red glow our own personal Mount Doom just over the ridge. We were in the Danakil Depression, in Ethiopia, which has been called one of the hottest places on Earth.
In one hand I held a fl ashlight; in the other, the hand of my seven-year- old son, Ray, the youngest member of our intrepid troop that had set out to visit one of Africa’s most active volcanoes. Behind us stretched a faint row of fl ashlights and headlamps from the other members of the team. The camels carried our bags. The local guards carried old boltaction rifles across their shoulders. The dried lava around us still radiated the punishing heat of the day.
We were in what has been called one of the hottest places on Earth, so this fi nal trek up to the Erta Ale volcano had to be made after the blazing sun had set.
After a three-hour hike, we crested the ridge. Before us was the glowing caldera, fi lled with dancing fountains of lava.
Ethiopia is increasingly making its mark on the global tourist map. Once just the province of dedicated Peace Corps workers and intrepid backpackers, newly built roads and new hotels are opening it up to the broader tourist market.
But even for the most veteran traveller to Ethiopia – who has already visited the babooninfested northern highlands, the nearly inaccessible mountain monasteries of the Tigray Region or the rock- cut churches of Lalibela – the Danakil is in a category of its own.
This punishingly hot lowland, set between the mountains of the Tigray Region and the Eritrean Red Sea Coast, is home to immense salt flats that once were a major source of wealth for the medieval Abyssinian Empire, as well as colourful sulfur pools and the Erta Ale – or “smoking mountain” – the most accessible of the region’s volcanoes.
And we decided to take the kids along. There was my son, as well as a nine-year- old and 11-year- old who, well protected by sunblock and broad hats, had a great time. Despite the region’s forbidding reputation, a well- organised tour in four-wheel- drive vehicles made for an unforgettable trip of four days that included the main sights of the region, including the salt fl ats, the sulfur pools and the volcano.
One of the fi rst Europeans to make his way through the Danakil in the 1930s was the young British adventurer Wilfred Thesiger, who left behind the “Danakil Diaries” about his trips through a land that had meant the death of so many explorers before him, thanks to the exceptionally fierce and nomadic Afar people.
He wrote about how, for the Afar, you weren’t truly a man until you had killed someone. “A man can marry before he has killed, but no other woman will sleep with him,” he wrote, adding: “They invariably castrate their victims, even if still alive.”
Yet despite these dangers, he spent weeks exploring the area, hunting wild game and charting the course of the Awash River. “They were a cheerful, happy people despite the incessant killing,” he noted.
Thankfully, the rigors of the journey are much less now. Even a few years ago, the lack of roads through the Danakil meant long, spine-rattling trips over dirt tracks in a four-wheel- drive vehicle. Now, new roads have been cut through the mountains from the neighbouring Tigray Region, so a journey of days is now a matter of hours.
We set off from Mek’ele, the capital of the region and a bustling, comparatively new town located a short fl ight from Addis Ababa. Our convoy consisted of two Toyota Land Cruisers for our seven-member group (me, my wife and son, and the other two children who had a parent each) and the guide, as well as a third vehicle carrying food, equipment and the cook.
The twisting road into the mountains above Mek’ele is a beautiful drive with sharp-faced peaks, wild vegetation and cool temperatures, but soon we were descending into the lowlands of the Afar Region and the heat set in. The fi rst stop was the town of Berhale, little more than a collection of makeshift huts made of fl apping canvas and corrugated iron near the highway.
Truckers, explorers and others must stop here and pick up the permits to head into the rest of the region.
A string of restaurants popped up and our guide led us into one, where our group gathered around a communal platter of the grilled Ethiopian meat- and- chiles dish known as tibs, accompanied by shiro, a chickpea sauce that is a national staple. We washed it down with cold beers in the sweltering noon heat.
In the distance, there was a collection of tents from a refugee camp of Eritreans that had fled across the not-very- distant border. It was a grim, hot, stony
We were in what has been called one of the hottest places on Earth, so this final trek up to the Erta Ale volcano had to be made after the blazing sun had set.
landscape. Clambering back into the air- conditioned cars was a real relief.
By late afternoon, we were slammed by the fi rst of many unforgettable sights of the Danakil - the camel caravans of the salt trade, a timeless image that probably hasn’t changed in centuries.
Moving along at a steady pace, hundreds of camels marched across the brown, fl at landscape in single fi le, with a herder walking along every dozen animals or so. Each camel carried tablets of salt that have been carved out of the ground for the last two millennia.
This “white gold” is the principal resource of the Danakil. Once, it was used as currency by the Abyssinian Empire. There also is archaeological evidence that the ancient empire of Axum, a contemporary of the Roman Empire, traded in these salt slabs.
The slabs are painstakingly chipped out of the ground, cut into uniformly sized tablets and loaded on to the camels every day. Each tablet is worth about a dollar.
At one time, the caravans would head all the way into Mek’ele, a trip of weeks, but now they generally just go to Berhale, our midday road stop, in a twoday, 46-mile trek. There, the salt is offloaded onto trucks and taken by the new road to the rest of the country.
There are about 700 registered salt miners from the Muslim Afar people and the Christian Tigrayans. As we snapped photos, they called out to us in Arabic, exchanged greetings and asked for cigarettes and water.
Some 30,000 years ago, the Red Sea covered this low-lying region before eventually receding and leaving behind the thick salt deposits.
Just before dusk, we arrived at the fl ats, which look like a skating rink that stretches on to the horizon. A thin layer of water on the surface turns it into a mirror and reflects the images of the distant mountains.
The salt is white and looks like snow, making the lines of camels walking across it seem especially surreal - a bit like a Nativity scene in a Midwest town after a snowfall, but really hot.
We took off our shoes to keep them from being damaged by the salt before venturing out across the slick, ridged surface.
The squad of Ethiopian soldiers that accompanied us to the fl ats - we were, after all, just a few dozen kilometres from the Eritrean border, which was still in a state of tension with Ethiopia - was as enchanted by the scene as we were, posing for selfies in front of the endless, white plain as the sun set.
The children danced across the salt, jumping in the air and marveling at the little bubbles coming up through the slick surface.
We spent the night in the nearby village under the open air, with a steady wind that kept us cool despite the muggy heat. The next morning, it was on to Dallol, which has the unenviable reputation of being one of the hottest inhabited places on Earth, with an average temperature of 100 degrees. It is one of the lowest points on the continent, more than 300 feet below sea level.
The ground became a grim, cracked brown with streaks of colour until we reached a low rise that held bubbling sulfur springs. Cresting the hill, our eyes were assaulted by colours that should not exist in nature.
Bright yellow, red and orange mineral deposits surrounded bubbling pools as steam poured from vents in the ground. It was just 8am, but the heat was intense: A hot, humid, cloying sensation that had us sweating profusely in a matter of minutes. Faces soon turned red and clothes became suffocating.
I felt for the soldiers, in their heavy green camoufl age uniforms, but they seemed to be fi ne as they merrily took more selfies and helped my son clamber over the rough ground. — WP-Bloomberg