DJIBOUTI
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FROM ETHIOPIA
|
|
TO RWANDA
|
May
9, 2016 to May 13, 2016
Bob
Francescone
MAY 9, 2016: ARRIVAL IN A BLAST FURNACE
Thirty
minutes and 170 miles after take-off we drop onto the tarmac in Djibouti and we
twenty or so passengers disembark into a blast furnace. At 6pm, Djibouti still
glows red.
Passport control is the usual deadly
event, light-years away from the handshaking, smiling and welcoming experience
in Somaliland.
There are 4 of us in the ‘Passengers
with visa’ line when the Passport Guy walks off. After about 10 minutes we
figure out he has closed up shop, or perhaps melted on his way back.
Another PG eventually tells us to line
up ‘anywhere’. We do. Our visas, all correct, and issued by the Djibouti
Embassy in Washington, seem to confuse the assembled Passport Guys and Gals.
Pages are turned, discussed. Phone calls ensue. Passports are waved as accents
to the conversations. But, we get them back, stamped, from the sullen Passport
Gal, walk through the wicket, wander around looking for the exit, get Djibouti
Francs (176 to the dollar) from an ATM, find the exit door and enter Djibouti.
By now we are cooked beyond Medium
Well, verging on Crispy, and definitely wilted.
The L’Heron Auberge is true to its
promise of a free ride from the airport and a few minutes after the heat sucker
punches us as we walk out the arrival doors, charming, helpful and colorfully
muu-muu-ed Felicity welcomes us to the fan-cooled lobby of the hotel and
suggests that while they replace a double bed with twins, we order in a pizza.
Huh? Pizza? Delivered? Yes, to both. And it’s delicious.
This is an expensive city. Our 12-inch
pizza costs what it would in the USA. High prices here are due to the presence
of the huge foreign military, aid, and diplomatic communities. Farangi
financing does not run to bargaining, and these farangi are loaded. And
demanding. That’s also why the pizza is good and gets delivered anywhere in the
city.
Djibouti is famous for seafood. It had
better be very, very, very good.
MAY 10, 2016: DJIBOUTI DAY 1
- DJIBOUTI CITY - TOUCHES OF FRANCE AND 'STARBUCKS', UNMISTAKEABLY
AFRICAN
‘Djibouti does not
understand war. We are all the same, no difference. Why war?’
Waleed drives guests free of charge from and to our hotel,
his hotel, actually. Born in Djibouti of Yemeni parents, raised in France, with
an Ethiopian wife, now running a hotel for tourists and at least tri-lingual, his
experience and perhaps his perspective are wider than most. But he’s right on.
Why war? We’ve heard that over and over again as we travel, and especially in
Moslem countries. They recognize that fundamentalist crazies exist and don’t
want to be confused with them. Just like a lot of Americans.
We swim through the thick wet air, 100 degree plus---and
still heating up at 11am---to visit Les Caisses market in The African Quarter
of Djibouti City. Every shopkeeper has a
routine to suck us into the shade of the tiny shops. In the clothing section
they almost succeed. Head scarfs, both men’s and women’s, hang flaccid,
defeated by the heat even down to their motionless fringes, but so lovely.
The Mocha Frappucino is cold, topped with whipped cream and
delicious in the Bunna Café. Any
resemblance to the purveyor of coffee and related drinks, the one with the
green and white logo, is purely
intentional…and spot on, down to the prices. Every table is filled and there’s
nary a farangi in the bunch, other than us, of course. Frappucini (?) are big sellers, in all 10
flavors. Outside, lead begins to flow in the streets.
Djibouti is searing.
We don't even see mad dogs or Englishmen in the streets. The streets are
crowded though, alive, like the streets in all African cities. Djibouti has
trees, and even some shade, but everyone still sweats.
Djibouti City has an
odd charm, even in the heat. Like so many French colonial cities in the tropics
it has an elegance, slightly tawdry, but unmistakably there beneath the
wrinkles.
If
she were a woman, Djibouti's name would be Simone, never Yvette, or Marie. She
would be of a certain age, have a husky voice that hints of a past in
smoke-filled rooms, and a youngish and strapping chauffeur/gardener to drive
her wild and plow her fields, to fan her in the late afternoon and pour her
gin.
Two
hours with her suggest untold stories, perhaps tales Scherezade could tell, and
leave an impression. But...are enough in this heat.
Mais, oui, two hours
at the Slow Roast setting are indeed enough, even with a break for an icy
frappucino. We taxi back to the hotel, bargaining down from the asked 1000
Francs via a pass through 500 (to show We Know The Score) to the reasonable
600.
Waleed’s L’Heron
Auberge is away from the center, in a quiet neighborhood, the heat kept at bay
in our room by an enthusiastic…and non-explosive...air conditioner, and by
hyper ceiling fans in the comfy lobby. English, French, and Japanese syllables
chatter across the big, soft leather sofas and arm chairs.
Too lazy and hot to
go out, we order in, thumbing past Indian, Chinese, and sushi and landing on
pizza. Again. It’s delicious, even if ‘with olives’ means with just four,
almost too few to justify the plural.
We’ve made
arrangements to leave tomorrow at 9 am for an overnight trip to two lakes in
the Djibouti side of the Danakil Depression. We traveled through the Ethiopian
half during our first Ethiopia trip in late 2014. (That’s when I met Ethel The
Insane, Bitch Camel from Hell. Remember her?) and want to complete the set.
This part is even
more extreme. Lac Abbé and Lac Assai, are the lowest spots on the African
continent, third lowest on the planet. The two lakes are also the hottest
places on Earth. Oui, hotter than Djibouti City. With no AC, no fans, no
frappucino, no pizza.
Don’t ask!
MAY 11, 2016-DJIBOUTI DAY 2
PART 1
It’s
110 degrees at 4:34 in the afternoon along the shores of Lac Abbé, close to,
but not quite right at the hottest place on Earth. Coulda fooled me.
Tomorrow we go to the really hot spot,
assuming the tires don’t melt.
We have been on the road since 9am. It
really is a road, paved even, until about noon. Then it becomes a ‘road’ only
in some cartographer’s chat-induced hallucination. Much of it is a rumble
across an ancient seabed that does not take well to remembering passers-by. Not
even the seabed’s reluctantly saved faint hints of tire tracks survive in the
miles of lava rock prairie that lead up to the lake. Sheena, our driver has
built in GPS. He doesn’t even sweat. Omar, our guide, has done this trip
‘uncountable times’. We’re in safe hands.
Ethiopia’s part of the Danakil
Depression took us to incandescent, sulfuric pools of Venus and the over-heated
erupting volcanos of Jupiter’s moon, Io. Lac Abbé takes us to Spock’s Vulcan, or
Mercury.
The lake is the remnant of a much
larger inland sea, fed by geothermal ducts, and toxic. For eons, the ducts
percolated beneath the surface slowly building chimney towers of effluvia into
massive contorted stalagmites. Then the lake began to dry up, the waters
exposing the chimneys. Now they are all black towering heaps on the flat
surface of the deeply receded ancient lake bed. Some spit steam. Hot springs
ooze heat onto the black rock. Backlit at sunset they loom, rock, craggy,
alien, monstrous, out of the blowing dust
Our digs at the ‘campement touriste’
are simple: camp mattresses on camp cots, under mosquito nets, inside igloos
made of loosely woven straw mats stretched over bent metal rebar rods. The door
flap is another mat, rolled and tied up with string. This is the moveable
housing of the area’s nomadic Afar people gone high tech. They typically use
tree branches, not metal rods, but trees are scarce here, and rebar will do.
The mats block most of the sunlight
and a lot of the breeze. My open door angles away from the setting sun,
sidestepping the heated rays, but breeze friendly. The Mat Motel is pretty
comfy. For 110 degrees.
Life at 110 offers some new
experiences. An iced bottle of water taken straight from an icy bath in the
van’s ice chest, is coolish in ten minutes, warmish in 20, and shower-ready in
30.
The cell phone is hot, behaving
strangely, spewing nonsense messages, announcing the camera is disabled, and
responding sluggishly, if at all, to taps from my hot fingers. Nestled against
a cold bottle of water fresh from the ice chest, it recovers from heat stroke
and behaves…for a while.
I lie on the mattress looking up
through the open weave of the mats at specks of blue. They turn grey, then
rumble.
It’s about to rain and I’m living in a
sieve…
MAY 11, 2016-DJIBOUTI DAY 2, PARTS 1 AND 2- LAC
ABBE
Omar
and Sheena rush to the rescue, pick up the mattresses and run across the black
lava to 3 cement block houses with wire bunk beds and rain proof roofs. They
have none of the panache of the Mat Motels, but none of the inside rain,
either.
The cement cubes have been locked up
in 110 degrees (plus, remember the plus) for days. The temperature inside is
set at ‘Pizza, Crispy’. Hot air whooshes out into the ‘cooler’ air. In a few minutes,
inside is at ‘Cakes and Muffins’. We move in at ‘Quiches, Four Minute Eggs’ and
‘Keep Warm’.
Huge winds stir up dust all around us,
leaving the chimneys floating black against a metal sky. The rain stays to the
east, and we sit on the west side of the cement ovens, catching a few drops
that the wind carries over the roof. They mix with the dust on our skin into a
patina, gritty and greyish. The sun sets behind dark clouds, and over the sheen
of the lake. The dark sucks away the rough precision of the craggy chimneys,
and they slowly dissolve into the night. Lac Abbé delivers.
Dinner, like our lunch of salad,
chicken, chips with a crêpe au chocolate chaser, is way too big. It’s been
weeks since we’ve eaten 3 meals a day, or any meat. The salad is good, the
pasta with veggie sauce decent, the beef kebabs spicy and tender, but we eat
very little of any of it. All the more for Omar, Sheena and the family that
runs the Mat Motel.
Omar carries over the cots from Mat
Motel and sets them up outside. ‘Sleep outside. It’s too hot inside’. We
noticed.
Mid way through the night, when even
the windblown raindrops blow elsewhere, I move out. To my patina of sweat and
dust I add a hurricane of Deet, mix it all into a pasty slurry all over my body
and bed down in the cool (ish) night air. Dennis follows. The mosquitos buzz
and hum right into my ears, but never land. Is it Deet, or Sweaty Eau de Bob,
mon peeyoufum du jour?
MAY 12, 2016-DJIBOUTI DAY 3 - LAC ASAL, A NEW LOW
POINT IN OUR TRAVELS
Rumbles
in my nether regions get me out of bed and scurrying to the line of toilets way
before our 5:50 wake up. It isn’t something amiss with the food because we all
ate the same stuff and I’m the only Hundred Yard Dasher. I think it’s just my
body responding to the meat, the volume of food, the heat.
Or, since I woke up on Vulcan, perhaps
alien germs got me.
Sheena drives us across the flats
until we’re surrounded by the chimneys. Omar takes Dennis for a walk to see
flamingos. My stomach passes on the birds.
I find a spot, pad it with my hat, and
sit to watch the dawn wash across the battalions of chimneys. Up close they are
obsidian sandcastles, puddled, but with sharp glassy edges. They absorb the
light of the rising sun as bronze highlights, and shimmer.
Sheena finds me and leads me to a
trail of hot springs. ‘Regardez’, he says, as he bends down near the water and
blows across the glowing tip of a cigarette. The clear air above the warm water
billows into white clouds. ‘Magique’, and it is. (I still have no idea why the
billowing. Help is appreciated.)
Sprite-sized, he jumps and the ground
around us vibrates like the top of a drum. Together we almost make it rumble,
two laughing men trampolining at sunrise. ‘La voiture, n’est pas possible ici’.
Right. I bet the car would sink right through that drum crust.
Shimmering monster smoking (sometimes)
sand castles, mysterious cloudy manifestations, untrustworthy terra not so
firma…Lac Abbé does indeed deliver….and we haven’t even had breakfast yet.
I pass on breakfast, narcotizing my
tum with a remedy I remember from childhood: Coca Cola. Omar suggests fish
sandwiches for lunch. I inhale another glass of Coke, put my name down for a
plain baguette.
The ride out is no smoother than the
ride in, ‘African Massage’ for sure, but performed by 10 Bulgarian weight
lifters. With attitude. The pummeling rearranges my innards and I feel the
cringes of an appetite.
Hours later the road leading to the
Lac Asal turnoff is all paved and smooth, thanks to the Chinese. Most of it is
also the main road between Ethiopia and the port of Djibouti, Ethiopia’s main
access to world shipping. Full trucks in kilometer long convoys carry goods to
Ethiopia. Empty ones in equal numbers crowd the roads back to the port. There’s
no truck smaller than Luxemburg.
Squeezing two or three people into the
space for one works with us squishable humans. With trucks the size of small
nations not so much. There can be unpleasant side…and front, and rear…effects.
We see the crumpled proof on the side of the road, highway hubris chastised by
the laws of physics.
The paved road that turns off towards
Lac Asal is a geology fieldtrip. We pass a long finger of the Gulf of Aden
pointing inland towards a staggering view down into the Rift Valley. Here the
valley is narrow, a canyon, embryonic divider of Djibouti from the rest of
Africa. Come back in the right number of million years and watch the sea flow
in and make Djibouti an island.
We descend through black rock. There
is no sign telling us when we drop below sea level or when we get to the lowest
spot on the African continent. There is just Lac Asal, blue, fringed with white
salt, hot on my bare foot, and lifeless, surrounded by a volcanic landscape
baked black in the hottest place on Earth.
I taste the water. Yep, it’s salty. I
trust Omar that it is saltier even than the Dead Sea. It is just that, salty,
without the other bitter, sour, foulish aftertaste of the Dead Sea water. The
salt along the shore is pure, table-ready.
And, yes, the air is hot. It doesn’t
feel any hotter than the 110 degrees at Lac Abbé, but my heat sensors may be
burned out. It’s just brain curdling hot.
About 4pm we say goodbye to Omar and
Sheena. They have been fun, and we’ll recommend them to our friend, Luis, who
wants to visit next winter, in the ‘cool’ season. A parka will not be
necessary.
The pounds of sweat-dust-Deet sludge
shower off without clogging the plumbing, but the soap combines with the water
to gum up and stiffen my hair. The spikey-haired punk look is not one of my
best. I don’t care: the AC works.
MAY 13, 2016-DJIBOUTI TO RWANDA - CHILLIN'
Outside:
110
Inside: AC
Flight at 7 pm
‘Nuff said
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