Semera

We have found accommodation – clean, modern room with en-suite bathroom, and with airco! – in Semera, ahead of our four days camping in the Danakil Depression. The chance to have a last shower, even though it is cold (which is not really a punishment, in the heat of Afar country!). Also last chance to charge whatever optical and electronic equipment we are carrying.

Semera is a strange town. Apparently, the government decided some time ago to establish a new administrative centre for the Afar region, and built Semera, a collection of modern offices and apartments for officials. Seven kilometers from an existing town, Logiya. Seven kilometers from where all the facilities, shops, non-office workers etc. are. Why on earth they required a seven kilometer gap is anybody’s guess, it is certainly not for lack of space in Logiya. Now minibuses plow the distance, adding to the chaos on the road that comes from the hundreds of trucks that use Logiya as an intermediate stop, and those that don’t.

The good thing is that Semera has the only hotel with en-suite bathrooms in the entire Afar region north of Awash.

(1) Logiya is a simple village, mud houses and corrugated iron

(2) Semera, on the other hand, is a modern town, modern offices

(3, 4) and then there are the outer suburbs....

(5, 6) baboons know the places along the road where truck drivers slow down, and throw food out of the window

(7) and another landscape picture, burnt rock