An alien landscape
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 marvelling 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 34.4 degrees Celsius. It is one of the lowest points on the continent, more than 91 metres 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.
In the distance were ruined buildings from the 1920s, when the Italians set up a camp to mine potash until they were driven out by the British in World War II. My mind boggled on how they were able to survive these temperatures and the rotten-egg smell of sulfur hanging heavy in the air for so long.
The garishly coloured rocks brought to mind the landscape of an alien planet, but none of us could stay too long to admire the scene as the heat kept climbing. We soon headed back down to the Land Cruisers.
There was more to see in this desolate, weird landscape. Pools of oily mineral water bubbled up in the flat plains; towers of salt-encrusted minimountains rose up into fantastic shapes. For lunch, we headed back toward the highlands and stopped at a mountain spring with water gushing over the cliff into a small pool.
We drove south along the edge of the highlands to Erta Ale. Close to the mountains, it once again was a different Ethiopia on view, with green fields of barley and the local teff grain as well as herds of cattle with immense, curving, prehistoric-looking horns walking beneath the acacia trees on the side of the road.
That night, we slept out under the stars again and dined on grilled lamb. There was an uncomfortable moment when a scorpion scurried out from the corner and I searched for a Kleenex to gently scoop it up out of harm’s way as I would a bug at home.
‘‘Just kill it,’’ shouted one of my fellow parents, and it occurred to me that with at least three children around, it might be time to put aside my Buddhist sensibilities. I stomped on it with my Birkenstock-clad foot.
The explorer Thesiger talked about the scorpions during his Danakil travels. He described putting on his pants with one inside after a dip in a lake and getting ‘‘severely stung’’.
To the volcano
The trip the next day to the volcano was a study in the declining quality of