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Djibouti

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.

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