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Djibouti

Welcome to Djibouti. officially the Republic of Djibouti, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is bordered by Eritrea in the north, Ethiopia in the west and south, and Somalia in the southeast. The remainder of the border is formed by the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden at the east. Djibouti occupies a total area of just 23,200 km2 (8,958 sq mi).

Djibouti is a multi-ethnic nation with a population of over 912,000 inhabitants. Arabic and French are the country's two official languages. About 94% of residents adhere to Islam, which is the official religion and has been predominant in the region for more than a thousand years. Djibouti City is the capital of Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa. It’s known for its 19th-century architecture and the port at the entrance to the Red Sea.

Djibouti is strategically located near some of the world's busiest shipping lanes, controlling access to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. It serves as a key refuelling and transshipment center, and is the principal maritime port for imports from and exports to neighboring Ethiopia. A burgeoning commercial hub, the nation is the site of various foreign military bases

A wind tornado dancing across the dry areas outside of the city of Djibouti City the capital.

Outside the city the area is very sparse and arid. The bulk of the population of Djibouti, 60% of the population lives in the capital city. We landed there and say very little of the Capital city.

Life is very difficult living on the land.

Souvenirs made by the Afar, tribesmen for sale at a look out point. Items are made out of salt from theGulf of Aden and the Red Sea with salt beds close by.

Afar Tribesmen

The Gulf of Aden and the The Red Sea

A mosque located close to the salt flats

As you can see life is very difficult to exist in the dry terrain.

Homes of the Afar Tridesmen

An existence at best

Talk about a wide spot in the road

Salt Lake Assal in the distance

This is a better home of the Afar

Lake Assal is a crater lake in the Danakil Desert in central Djibouti. Dormant volcanoes and black lava fields back its emerald water. More than 150m below sea level, it’s the lowest point in Africa. The wet section of the lake is a body of extremely salty water fed by hot springs. The dry section features a white salt bed from which lake water evaporated over the years. Salt is extracted in slabs

It is located at the western end of Gulf of Tadjoura in the Tadjoura Region, touching Dikhil Region, at the top of the Great Rift Valley, some 120 km (75 mi) west of Djibouti city. Lake Assal is a saline lake which lies 155 m (509 ft) below sea level in the Afar Triangle, making it the lowest point on land in Africa and the third-lowest point on Earth after the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea

No outflow occurs from the lake, and due to evaporation, the salinity level of its waters is 10 times that of the sea, making it the most saline in the world

Lake Assal is the world's largest salt reserve.

Intense heat and strong winds fuel rapid evaporation, leaving a bathtub ring of minerals around the lakes shore.

An Afar hut by the lake

Mosque in the background with next to nothing living conditions in the foreground. What a contrast.

Afar village

Tadjourah City is one of two ports in the northern part of the country. Administrative and customary center Tadjourah is also an important trading center. The small city also plays an important role in the political stability of Djibouti.

Due to its many whitewashed buildings and structures, Tadjourah is known as the White City

French is the spoken language

Most people in the wider region are involved in marine commerce, including a large number of fishermen. The region has sandy beaches, tourism and trade. It exports salts from deposits around Lake Assal, one of the country's main natural resources.

We arrived at Sable Blanc, a short distance from Tadjourah City just before sunset. We had a long day beginning with a flight from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and then a long drive from Djibouti City.

The main purpose of Sable blanc is, obviously, to wind down, to relax on the sand and in the waters of the Gulf of Tadjourah, to snorkel, and to just take a book and read in the sun. Some light breeze even makes the temperature bearable.

We arrived at the small hotel just as the sun was setting. Unfortunatly the reservations were not secured right for the group. We were short several rooms. We all ended doubling into rooms or sleeping on the beach for the night.

Beautiful sunset and the water was warm for an evening swim.

Our drivers and staff with us trying to solve a problem. The food surprisingly was quite good, local dishes.

Hidden from the main land by a small mountain range, the beach stretches out along the coast, on one side, a rocky outcrop of the mainland protects the bay against the open sea, the color of the sea is turquoise, and a little further on, there are some smaller beaches as well.

Looking back down the dirt road at the small Sable Blanc where we had spent the night..

Looking across the bare country side to the coast back to Tadjourah.

Lying on the Gulf of Tadjoura, it is home to a population of around 45,000 inhabitants. It is the third largest city in the country.

Really makes you appreciate what we have

Local school

Along the waterfront in Tadjourah

Downtown Tadjourah

Unemployment is extremely high in Tadjourah. It is 9 in the morning as we drove to town.

Tremendous poverty

Unemployment runs around 54%. You can see it on the streets. Men, boys, teenagers nothing to do.

Djibouti produces virtually nothing, relying instead on its port, which neighboring Ethiopia uses for its own imports and exports

Waiting to buy fresh fish just caught that monring

Cutting up the fresh fish just caught.

A Marlin or Swordfish just caught that morning.

Looking from outside on the street into the fish stall cutting up the meat of the fish

The fishing boats that the fishermen go out on daily.

By the mid-19th century Tadjoura was thriving, "while all the other so-called Afar sultanates along the coast were described ... as small decaying villages of no political or commercial importance.

Tadjoura owed this success to possessing a major slave market; Pankhurst suggests that a rough estimate of 6,000 people a year left Ethiopia through Tadjoura and Zeila.[7]

The slave trade was abolished by decree on 26 October 1889

Every where you looked you could see so many unemployed.

Stark contract with camels in the foreground and docks in the rear of the photo.

Home sweet home

Car trouble with one of our vehicles

Steam still coming up out of the ground

Our local guide explaining how the ground is shifting and pulling in opposite directions.

A crudely gouged hollow 300 metres above ground awaited us as we scrambled up the rubble. It dates back to 1978 when L'Ardoukoba erupted and then promptly subsided within a week

The eruption harmed nobody but left an awesome scar on the landscape. The sable-coloured rubble creaked beneath our feet as we walked over the roofs of small tunnels created by the rampaging lava flow

It's hard to imagine life ever prospering here. The only sign of movement came from one small crack in the ground where a single wisp of steam lazily sailed upwards into the sky

When I placed my hand gently above the opening, a blast of heat immediately. This episode provided a physical reminder of just how close we were to one of nature's most active works in progress

I actually crawled into the lava tube and looked out through this hole. What a strange feeling crawling along in a extinct volcano lava tube.

Nowhere is the country's inability to cultivate its landscape more evident than in the area surrounding the extinct volcano L'Ardoukoba

Looking down into the volcano Ardouokoba from a volcanic hill above the crater. The last eruption was in 1978. .

The Gulf of Tadjoura owes its existence to the interface between two of the earth’s tectonic plates, the Southern one being the African plate while the northern one is the Arabian plate... where the two meet there is a zone of crustal instability which results in the Gulf of Tadjoura and extends down through Africa as the East African Rift valley. ‘Crustal instability’ is a nice term which includes such things as earth quakes and volcanic eruptions as the two plates move relative to each other

From the top of the volcanic hill you could see Lake Assal and the crater in the opposite direction.

Road below driving across the face of the volcano crater floor.

Upon reaching the summit, we saw the raw crust of the coastline in the distance, looking like burnt sponge cake.

The wind was fierce at the top of the crater. At any minute a huge gust could blow you over the side.

Driving back to the shore it was hard to miss the huge fissure in the middle of the road. "That is the start of a new ocean," said our guide, What we were looking at was part of the Assal Rift, a point of convergence between three tectonic plates that is creating a crack, widening at a rate of 2cm a year. Djibouti, it seems, is nature's building site.

Devils Island Le Goubet

Djibouti was the last French colony in mainland Africa to gain independence, doing so in 1977. Warfare immediately broke out between the two main tribes: the nomadic Afars and the Issas. The latter group now have possession of almost all the political power. A truce was reached in 1994, and the chances of future conflict look slim – due in part to the presence of an American military facility here, the only US base in mainland Africa, which is maintained because of Djibouti's proximity to the hot-spots of the Middle East

The hamadryas baboon is native to the Horn of Africa

A rare sight by the side of the road two hamadryas baboons.

Lots of accidents on the narrow roads in the Horn of Africa

How would like to live in this town with the name of DikHil?

Another accident a tanker truck turned over

Meeting some local kids outside a lunch stop in DikHil

Meeting local kids for a few minutes

Nearby town of DikHil

Conversation is the main top of the day.

I really think Djibouti is one of the poorest countries I have encountered on the Horn of Africa.

Lots of unemployment in every village and town.

A wild ostrich

And her baby chicks

There are on no roads in this place on earth. Driving over open countryside, very foreboding and on rough terrain, in 4x4 land cruisers..

Lake Abbe, also known as Lake Abhe Bad, is a salt lake, lying on the Ethiopia-Djibouti border

The lake lies on a basin called the Afar Depression at a point where the Arabian, Nubian, and Somalian plates are pulling away from each other

The strain caused by the splitting Nubian and Somalian plates has created a strange landscape around Lake Abbe. As the two plates drift apart, the crust above them thins until it cracks.

Situated in the middle of the hot and hellish Afar Depression, Lake Abbe stretches six miles in width and is covered in clusters of massive, steam-blasting limestone chimneys

Although Lake Abbe is the ultimate destination for Ethiopia’s Awash River, its dry landscape absorbs the water, and the area is a vast landscape of salt flats. Besides Mount Dama Ali, a small dormant volcano, the landscape is almost completely level, and the steaming, sulfuric vents lend the region an apocalyptic, and Tatooine-like look.

Our drivers taking a break after hell hole driving for hours over none existent roads..

Some of the vents stretch as high as 150 feet into the air, and make the lake visible from miles around. Despite the hellish climate near Lake Abbe, nomadic Afar shepherds live in the area, along with a surprising population of flamingos.

The plane you see in the photo to the right is an Osprey. A plane-helicopter. Ironically these planes are stationed in the Military Base next to where I live, Oceanside, California. Camp Pendleton Marine Corp, Base home to these planes and our next door neighbor.

In Djibouti there is a US military base some miles from Lake Abbe

I was so pleased to be at the right place and exact moment to take this photo of the Osprey Tiltrotor Aircraft, half airplane and half helicopter, over the setting sun, and over the Chimneys in Djibouti.

The otherworldly landscape inspired Charlton Heston to shoot his classic 1968 film, "Planet of the Apes", on the shores of Lake Abbe.

The sun balancing on the Chimneys

Perfect balancing of the sun and chimneys.

The sun balancing and leaning on the Chimneys.

We were lead to believe we would be staying at a Red Sea Resort. This is home for the night. An Afar hut. Dirt floor, a cot, no sheets, no pillow, no blanket. Toilet off in the distance but no water, no toilet paper. Shower also in the distance no water, no towels, no soap . Surprisingly the food was good. Local dishes. A fellow traveler Bill is standing at the entrance with me.

Inside the Afar hut.

Fellow travelers and their huts. At least I had a hut built of stone and not skin covering the outside.

Ironically the moon this night in November 2016 was the brightest of the entire year with a larger than normal size moon.

As the boiling water bubble up to the surface, they deposit the dissolved calcium carbonates creating towering chimneys, the same way water trickling down the roof of limestone caves create stalactites and stalagmites.

Some of these chimneys reach heights of 50 meters, and puffs of steam vent from the top

Magma pushes to the surface through the thin spots and warm underwater springs.

The water is so hot you do not want to put a finger or hand in it.

Sun rising at 5:30 in the morning. Air was cool and crisp.

Young Afar boy out early in the morning. Notice the salt on the ground.

Close to Lake Abbe the landscape is really beautiful with the early morning sun shinning on it.

Lake Abbe is fed by the Awash River, and seasonal streams which enter the lake from the west and south, crossing the vast salt flats. On the northwest shore rises Mount Dama Ali, a dormant volcano

When continental plates move apart in the ocean, it creates new sea floor, but in East Africa, the process is happening on dry ground, where it is called continental rifting.

In a few million years, the Indian Ocean will break through the coastal highlands and flood the Afar Depression, creating a new ocean and making the Horn of Africa a large island.

The mud chimneys are really beautiful when you look closely at them

The nearest town lies 200 km away, 120 miles, but there is a small settlement established by the Afar people near the lake's shore. Aside from the Afar shepherds who brings their herds of sheep or donkeys to feed, the only inhabitants of this lake are pink Flamingos

Young Afar looking for customers to buy their handiwork.

When walking across this moonscape you have to be very careful not to step into an area that has boiling hot water underneath.

Breakfast and dinner area

Wait staff with Carol Ann and a fellow tourist from Australia

View across the moonscape as we are leaving.

Back on the none existent road to adventure

After early morning breakfast we departed Lake Abbe area with the ultimate goal of the border between Ethiopia and Djibouti. Then driving onto Dire Dawa in Ethiopia. We had no idea that the trip would take almost 16 hours over some of the worst terrain that anyone would ever want to drive on. We forded streams numerous times, drove in dry river beds. We shuttled between an unforgiving frontier between the two countries where we had to exchange vehicles. All of our luggage was inspected closely. After clearing customs in the middle of no where we were allowed to proceed onto Ethiopia.

Sure not like the highways in Southern California.

We meet another traveler along the trip.

More car trouble. This time a flat tire.

We come across another Afar village.

The Afar also known as the Danakil, Adali and Odali, are an ethnic group inhabiting the Horn of Africa. They primarily live in the Afar Region of Ethiopia and in northern Djibouti, although some also inhabit the southern point of Eritrea. Afars speak the Afar language

School was just breaking for lunch in a nearby larger village at noon as we passed through it.

We were quite a sight for all the kids and they ran up to our vehicles.

Nearby house we stopped for a few minutes to take photos of the children and try to communicate with them.

Young girl going home for lunch.

While we were stopped we got word that a young mother who had been tending some livestock out in the wasteland the day before did not return home last night. A search party of men had gone into the areas looking for her. It was feared that an animal had taken her. animal may have taken her. Life is very difficult for the Afar and these regions.

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