Erta Ale

When we walk down the mountain, the next morning, we actually see the slopes of the volcano close-up. Lava flows have come cascading down before solidifying whilst still furiously splashing, leaving an undulated, wavy surface. Fabulous structures have developed along the slope as part of the cooling process. It is just a pain to walk on the irregular surface, give me sandstone anytime (incidentally, give me sandstone, too, when it comes to sitting down: our trousers suffered badly from the occasional rest on the sharp tuffs).

(1, 2, 3) the side of the volcano in day-light, with numerous solidified lava structures

(4) wherever there is a little sand, grass manages to grow, incredible!

So this is where we have been the evening before, walking up, in the dark – well, by torch light, but not seeing much beyond our own feet. A strenuous 3.5 hour climb, not so much because of the climb, which was not very steep, but more because of the heat, despite the sun having gone down already. Pretty exhausting, perhaps we are less fit than we would like to think. But we got rewarded! Still some two hours away, we could already see the glare from the volcano, and when we come closer, we see the steam, we smell the sulphur. After having caught our breath again, we climbed down the crater rim. Erta Ale has two craters, one inside the other, and the outer one is made up of fibrous, once again undulating, lava, or whatever this particular stuff is called. Sometimes solid, but at other moments the rock crushes under our shoes, collapses, making us drop down. Never more than 10-20 cm, but it is an eerie feeling, especially because it is pretty dark everywhere: you could imagine yourself being swallowed by the volcano, if lower layers are equally weak. Getting closer to the rim of the inner caldera, you glimpse where you could end up: in purgatory, occasionally changing to hell when a burst of molten lava explodes upwards. Below – perhaps 50 to 100 meters down, difficult to estimate -, the inner caldera is entirely liquid: although parts of the lava lake seem dark, we can see the surface moving in angry waves, as if a bad storm blows over the lake. Some cracks in the dark surface allow a view of what is going on below the surface, and in case your imagination is insufficient, fountains of yellow and red-hot lava splash up along the rim at times, the glowing fluid clearly sticking to the rock afterwards. I have seen volcanoes before, and I have looked over crater rims before, but this, I have never seen.

The guides are a little nervous when we come to close to the edge, and the surface is indeed pretty hot – although I think they are more concerned about pieces of the rim breaking off and falling down, taking us with them. Into purgatory, into hell.

(5, 6, 7) just a few photos of the crater by night - active it is1

 Of course I need to see this in daylight too, so where most other tourists descent at dawn, to avoid the heat of the day, I have to get back into the outer crater, at first light. The softish rock we were walking on last night is silvery coloured, and once again, solidified in beautiful patterns.  And wherever there is a strong sulphur smell – much stronger now than earlier, and almost suffocating in some areas – yellow threads, fibres, are attached to the rock. I don’t know how this process works, but it is fascinating, seeing this web of sulphur covering the rock.

The crater is as active as the night before, and as impressive, although in daylight it is actually much smaller than we had anticipated. The contrasting glows are less pronounced, but you still get a pretty good idea of what is going on, down there.

(8) a watery sunrise over the crater

(9) the crater in day-light, actually pretty small

(10) this is the stuff we walked on, an crashed through, during the night

(11) and this is the yellow sulphur web that forms across the rocks where vents expulse sulphur, something you can clearly smell

We start walking down the volcano much too late, and it takes us almost three hours to reach the camp where the cars are parked. Partly because of the amazing geology on the way, the fantastic structures in the solidified lava. Partly because of the uncomfortable surface, of course. Partly because the camel that had brought our stuff up the night before had decided to leave, together with another group, earlier in the morning, leaving our camel man at a loss, and us with lots of equipment to carry down between the seven of us. But mostly, because by 9 am it is already searing hot on the slopes. And there is nothing around, just back rock. No shade, no shade whatsoever. We have now been three days in the Danakil Depression, two more to go, but we are already thinking of our well-deserved – at least, that’s what we think – comfortable hotel room at the end of it. I cannot even begin to think what it must be like for the people who live here, with very little water - and forget about cold water -, with no shade; with the permanent heat of the Danakil Depression around them day and night for the rest of their lives, and that of their children. Until the road to Mekele is finished, perhaps. That road up the Erta Ale, that I mentioned earlier, I am afraid that will still take some time: this remains, after all, some of the most inhospitable countryside in the world.

 

(12) camel man on the way down, looking for his camel

(13) and one of our police escort, demonstrating yet another use for a Kalashnikov, as a carrying stick

Dodom

Leaving Afrera was surreal. A six-lane tarmac road, the biggest we have seen so far in Ethiopia, is leading to… nowhere, outside town we immediately end up on a gravel road where two cars have difficulty passing each other. Apparently, there is a road planned all the way to Mekele, 300 km away, right through the Danakil Desert. So far this trip has not been as adventurous as we had expected; in two years time, even Danakil can be done by comfortable sedan, and who knows, in a few more years, one can drive a touring car up the Erta Ale volcano!

(1) the six-lane highway out of Afrera, leading to a narrow gravel road immediately outside town

Anyhow, not yet, and for the time being, outside Afrera the real adventure does indeed start. There could be no more desolate landscape than this. We drive through more black basalt, in fact we are driving on top of a lava stream, black stone not unlike asphalt, as far as the eye reaches. You can just imagine this as it originally was, a liquid flow of molten rock, irregular undulating surface, perhaps not unlike waves, which then rapidly cools off, and literally freezes in its liquid form. Big cracks have appeared at the top of the crests, where further cooling has broken up the surface. Occasionally, whitish sand, filling in the irregularities of the surface, and in the distance the a few white dunes. The sand and clay layers have solidified, essentially they have been baked in the hot sun to form a thin crust. So once in a while the shape of a volcano appears at the horizon.

(2, 3) more grave hills, intricate structures carefully built up

(4) and the occasional volcano, one of the more than 30 that occur in this area, most of them less than a million years old (geological infants, as I saw it described somewhere)

As so often in the Danakil, although few and far between, there are small hamlets, small herds of goats fighting for a place in the shade of the only tree within sights; the occasional group of camels – apparently wandering off from the village on their own to find a grazing place, then cross to where they can find water, to return to the village at night, again. We get to Dodom, a somewhat more substantial village, with a school (127 kids between grades 1 to 8: where on earth do they come from?!), some corrugated iron sheds. Further out there is a whole range of huts, built on the black lava surfaces. I am being told that, in July, it rains here, and that the valley then turns green, good pasture for the cattle. But that cannot last long, in this heat, and all those other months of the year the cattle is actually being taken far away. Why come back at all, then, one could ask?

(5) a group of camels, or (6) some cows searching for shade, in the middle of noweher, really

(7, 8) and outside Dodom this collection of huts, built on a solidified lava surface, with the Amaytole volcano in the back

From Dodom we continue, now turning onto an unclear path right across the lava surfaces. Adventure, for sure, the vehicle is bouncing slowly across the rocks, trying to avoid the sharpest corners. Black, black, black, everywhere; come to think of it, this is how the bottom of the ocean must look like. Actually, we are driving across a proto-ocean bottom, I guess. Another volcano dooms in the distance, would that be Erta Ale? Luckily, it isn’t, it would have been quite a walk up, this one, called Amaytole. On the other side, another big volcano, Boreale, can just been seen through the haze. In fact, Erta Ale is a rather small, minuscule volcano, amidst the big boys. Piece of cake, really.

Ascending the volcano is normally done starting early evening, when it is a little – only a little – cooler. Somebody has established a number of round huts at the base, where we can find some shadow, and wait out our time. In the high season this could well be a busy place – well, everything is relative, perhaps 30-40 tourists, plus their entourage. Around the huts, even inside the huts, traces of that high season are well visible. Rubbish in the corners, plastic bottles - especially the broken ones, which have no economic value anymore -, rusty tins, paper. Some of the huts have been used as toilets, disgusting really. How difficult can it be to employ two or three people – from those hefty fees tourists are required to pay - to clear the compound, and burn the rubbish regularly?

(9) the "lodge" at the base of Erta Ale - the table and chairs are our own contribution

(10) our police escort preparing for the ascent, too

Danakil Depression

This trip was expected to have many highlights, but one of them, standing out among the highlights, must be the Danakil Depression. It is not only the lowest point on the African continent (in places 116 m below sea level), not only the hottest place on earth (34-35 oC, on average (!), and hottest temperature ever measured, at 64.4 oC). It is also one of these places without any infrastructure, no roads, no towns, forget about hotels, even of the Assaita standard – why on earth are we going here in the first place?

Danakil is the only place on earth where one can observe continental spreading. Continental what? Continental spreading, the actual moving apart of continents, and the widening of the ocean in between. Well, observing is a big word, this process, although one of the fastest in geological terms, still only takes place at a rate of a few centimeters per year. And nobody is sure whether the East African Rift will in fact succeed in creating an ocean – it isn’t there yet, and the geological record is full of failed rifts: if anything this will take another 10 or 20 million years. But the process is in full swing, with all its expressive features. We are talking emerald salt lakes with hot springs, a permanently active volcano with bubbling lava at the bottom of the caldera, yellow-caked rock formations around sulphurous springs, thick salt packages in evaporated lakes: for a geologist, even a retired one who has hung his hammer in the willows (I know, I know) years ago, this is exciting stuff.

Watch this space....

Afar country

Afar country – including the Danakil Depression, or Danakil Desert, it goes by several names – has been described as a pretty lawless region. Banditry is rife. In the 1930s, when Wilfred Thesiger became the first Westerner to enter the Aussa Sultanate in the heart of the Afar area, the survival rate of Westerners (in those days Africa wasn’t yet flooded with Chinese) in Afar country was rather low. Thesiger had done his homework, and found that an 1875 Egyptian army expedition led by a Swiss mercenary had been exterminated, as had been two Italian expeditions in 1881 and 1884. A 1930 party saw several servants massacred, but the British expedition leader survive, and Greek traders had been killed there in 1932. Despite all this evidence, Thesiger sets out into the Danakil Region in 1933, officially to discover the course of the Awash River, which seemed to disappear in the desert somewhere near Eritrea, but in reality more for the thrill of the unknown, the longing for travel hardships, and perhaps to be able to say afterwards: I have done it. He does recognize that “all that mattered to these people was to kill, how they did so had little significance”; the Danakil, too, castrate their victims as proof of having killed a man, like their southern cousins the Adermen I wrote about earlier. And he has plenty of apprehensive moments during his trip, when passing through a narrow gorge ideal for an ambush, or when camping, surrounded by more than 200 Afar warriors. However, he has the advantage of being accompanied by several important Danakil headmen, and they seem to have been able to secure safe passage through this inhospitable area.

After a few false starts, forcing him to return to Addis Ababa, it took Thesiger two months to travel from Awash to Aussa, and another to travel beyond the salt lakes at the Djibouti border to the coast.

We drove to Assaita, which is where the Aussa sultanate was some 80 years ago, in a day.

Thesiger probably had the more impressive experience, but we did enjoy the trip, too. By now, there is a road from Awash all the way to the port city of Djibouti, likely the best maintained tarmac road in the entire country. This is the import and export lifeline for landlocked Ethiopia, import mostly, because many of the trucks driving north are empty; many have stacked their trailer onto the truck. The heavy traffic makes plenty of victims, in the form of dead goats, some dead gazelles, even a dead camel – and a dead vulture nearby, obviously didn’t get away fast enough. I imagine that victimhood will be extended to humans, too, seeing the many overturned trucks along the road, not surprising given the way the truckers drive. They see nothing wrong in overtaking a slower truck going uphill, even if they cannot see what is on the other side of the bend ahead.

Right, that is what we didn’t enjoy; what we did enjoy was the hauntingly black volcanic landscape, turning increasingly dry the further north we come. The vegetation, if there is any at all, is low acacia trees and shrubs, the ones with sharp needles capable of penetrating a car tire. The only viable business seems to be charcoal production, although occasionally, closer to the river, the land turns into wetland which allows for some agriculture, and for bamboo to be grown, used for mats. For the rest, large areas are entirely empty, no people, no animals – and then, suddenly, there are a few huts again, quite similar to the small round huts that I earlier described as “typically Somali”. Perhaps they are more typically Afar? No idea why these people are here. No idea what they are doing here. A few kilometers further, a camel train crosses the road, well over 200 camels, probably. But for most of the road, basalts dominate. Hard to believe that this is where – as the Ethiopians claim – “it all began”: this is where in 1974 the then-oldest hominid fossil, 3-4 million years old Lucy (after She who was in the Sky with Diamonds) was found. The fact that there are now quite a few older fossils does not diminish the Ethiopian enthusiasm for Lucy, even though, I have been told, there is absolutely nothing to be seen at the site (I didn’t go and check).

Near Gewane there is the Mount Ayelu volcano, right next to the road almost, beautifully showing ancient lava flows on its slopes. It all adds to an unforgiving, hot landscape where you don’t want to get stuck. It puts Thesiger’s achievement into some perspective.

(1, 2) typical landscape in Afar country - we'll see more of this in the next few days

(3) charcoal is big business, and probably only business for many

(4) although in the scarce wetter areas bamboo mats are also being produced

(5, 6) "in the middle of nowhere" redefined

(7, 8) and out of nowhere comes a herd of camels crossing the road, casually being guarded by a few AK47-toting Afars

(9) and the first of many volcanoes, this is Mount Ayelu