What a difference a day may makes! Up at dawn for another bland breakfast and we are off over salt fields again to Dallol. At 160 metres below sea level we are at the lowest point on earth. In the summer it regularly gets to 50 degrees celsius for us its a balmy mid 30s.
What ensues is one of the most alien landscapes I have ever seen a combination of the heat, salt and volcanic activity. The 4WD stops at the base of a massive salt hill and we walk up over successive zones of white, red, orange and bright yellow salt according to the mineral contamination. The red is from manganese and the yellow is sulphur. It is strange walhing over the dried salt crust crunching underfoot. Three Ethiopian army soldiers are scouting up front carrying submachine guns are we are only 20km from the formerly disputed border with Eritrea.
As we reach the yellow sand sulphur smells irritate the nose and eyes belching out of a myriad little fumeroles. Tiny geysers spit boiling water over fantastically sculptured yellow salt forming iridescent blue little lacunes. There are salt caves and pools and a large pool has multiple vents bubbling yellow water up to the surface.
The coup de grace sees us back out onto the massive salt plain tos see the Afar tribespeople in the heat cutting enormous pavement stone pieces of salt to trade. All around are camels resting on the salt. Soon they will be loaded with the salt blocks, tied head to tail of the camel in front for the 7 day walk across the salt and dirt to the next big town of Mekele to sell the salt. Then it is back to repeat the process.
Tonight it is sleeping in a local house in a well off village. We get word that our luggage has been found and we will be reunited with our packs tomorrow morning. In the late afternoon we sit in a shaded courtyard up in the cooler hills ringing Danakil under a grape vine strewn pergola. Cold beer and an Ethiopian curry ceremony hosted by the pretty teenage girl of the household completes the picture as we get to know our our fellow travellers.