Advertisement
Published: January 22nd 2010
Edit Blog Post
As I leave the Embassy of Djibouti in Addis a Singaporean guy, R, starts up a conversation. It turns out he has similar plans to me and I persuade him to alter his intended route slightly to join forces. As easily as that, I have a new travel companion. With what befalls us over the course of the next few days I’m sure that he more than once regrets this decision.
Unable to visit the famed Danakil Depression due to the extortionate costs of taking a tour ($1600 for three days on the back of a camel!) I have set my sights on exploring the salt lakes at the southern end of the Danakil Desert instead. I am enticed by the lack of information on the region in any guidebook I've read and by the LP stating that expeditions here are for hardened travellers only - though any delusions I might have of claiming such a status are of course negated by virtue of carrying the LP in the first place. My plans do indeed prove impossible to fulfil, though not for the reasons implied by the book.
To begin with, getting to the region requires two
full days of uneven, uncomfortable bus travel. On the way the mountainous highland scenery gives way to scrubby grassland and broad-topped trees that in turn surrender to increasingly barren, gravelly desert. It gets hotter. Its gets hotter.
First we pitch up in Semera, where our only bit of concrete information says we must go to organise incursions around the lakes. It is meant to be the regional capital but there is nothing here, and I mean nothing. No shops. One hopeless hotel. A few ugly administrative buildings. The tourist office is shut and we must wait two days for it to open so we hitch back down the road to Logiya where there is some semblance of life and I am just about able to dust off my dormant and decaying GCSE French to communicate with the locals. In the end it turns out that we can only get an official permission paper to visit the lakes from the office in Semera, but can apparently arrange the nuts and bolts of our trek at another town, Asayita, near the first of the lakes. So on we go. Here we are told to continue instead to the next town,
Afambo.
While waiting for the final bus to Afambo I am randomly challenged to fight by an old Afar guy. The Afar are the dominant ethnic group in the region, renowned for their ferocity and short tempers. Up until the middle of the twentieth century it was still customary to kill and castrate any white man foolish enough to venture into this inhospitable region. I am able to extricate myself without too much difficulty, jokingly placating him with an awed squeeze of his bicep followed by a squeeze of my own accompanied by blowing a raspberry. He laughs amicably enough, but when one of the numerous child onlookers shows too much mirth for his liking, he administers a vicious, stunning slap to the unfortunate youth's face. The Afar, many of whom still sharpen their teeth and carry their traditional, long curved knives, are not to be trifled with and we get some considerably hostile looks and menacing words of warning during our stay in the area.
Afambo is merely a collection of huts, devoid of any English or French speakers. Eventually we successfully (we naively think) communicate our desires by waving around our permission slip. Camels
Local cattle
Their horns are soooo huge, keeping their heads upright seems to defy the laws of physics are sadly out of the question though. There is no food to be found anywhere besides in a shop selling only candles and biscuits, but we manage to locate some water to purify. The only one of the 'police' wearing any sort of official garment - an unmarked, ragged, heavy blue jacket - indicates that we can sleep in the 'police station'. It is an epically battered, empty building, with a weed filled courtyard and signs of dilapidation all around. The most telling evidence for it being an abode of law enforcement is the presence of two crazed inmates in a holding cell who holler at me when I go in search of some toilets. I wonder if they've been left abandoned for as long as the washing facilities.
The next morning brings with it a two man security detail, one young and boisterous, one old and moody. We power off to the nearby lakes, Afambo and Gamarri, impressed by the abundant life blossoming all around – including so many crocodiles that I wonder how there can possibly be enough food to sustain them all – which contrasts so starkly with the desolation just a few kilometres away.
The lakes themselves are nice enough, but the guard gets cross when we ask to explore further along Gamarri and rudely insists we hurry back. Disaster then strikes. We show the impatient guides, again utilising our official permission slip, that we want to continue on, ultimately to visit Lake Abbe, which I've had my heart set on for quite a while. Either the tourist office deliberately ignored our requests without telling us, or the disinterested guides simply don't want to go any further, because they gesture that some of the lakes (including Abbe) are not on the list and therefore off limits. Sadly we have no way to dispute this because the paper is written only in Amharic. They pointedly refuse to carry on so we trudge disconsolately back. Then, inevitably, they attempted to overcharge us for their half-arsed mornings work. It’s a bit of a fail all round.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.058s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 13; qc: 28; dbt: 0.03s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb