Lake Assal

Lake Assal is the lowest point in Africa — a hundred and fifty-five metres below the sea, in a crater of the Afar rift two hours west of Djibouti city — and one of the saltiest waters on Earth, ten times the sea: a lake of turquoise ringed by a shore of white salt crust and gypsum that crunches underfoot and blinds at noon, fed by hot springs and by the water of the Ghoubbet-el-Kharab, the Devil's Cauldron, the closed gulf ten kilometres east that seeps to it under the ground. Between the two stands the Ardoukôba, a volcano that was born in November 1978, the newest on the continent, in the crack where Africa is pulling apart from Arabia a centimetre a year; the ground here is the floor of a future ocean. The Afar have gathered the lake's salt for as long as anyone knows and their camel caravans still carry it toward Ethiopia; in the gulf the whale sharks come from October to February; and Lake Abbé, a day further, has the limestone chimneys that a film once used for another planet.

The traveller comes out from Djibouti city in a 4×4 with a driver who knows the road — the RN9 toward Tadjoura, then the descent past the Ghoubbet's black cliffs and the young lava of the Ardoukôba to the white shore —, and comes early, because by ten the light on the salt is a wall: walks the crust to the water's edge, floats if the season allows, and does not touch the eyes; buys a salt block or a crystal from the Afar at the roadside; climbs, with a guide, the Ardoukôba's rim for the view of the rift, the lake below and the gulf beyond; stops on the way back at the Ghoubbet for the cliffs and the Devil's Island; and, with a second day, goes on to Lake Abbé for the chimneys and a night in an Afar camp under the stars. Djibouti city has the fish grilled in the Yemeni way, the French bread and the khat afternoons; the coast has the whale sharks.

The Guide's honesty: Djibouti is small, hot and expensive — the hotels and the 4×4s are priced for a garrison town, the visa is bought online in advance, and the heat from June to September is not weather but a condition; the lake is a day trip and not a destination to sleep at, there is no shade, no water and no shop, and the salt cuts feet and corrodes cameras; the roads are shared with the trucks to Ethiopia; and the reward is a landscape found nowhere else — a turquoise lake in a white bowl below the level of the sea, a volcano younger than most of its visitors, and the ground itself opening —, which the Guide counts among the strangest and most beautiful hours the continent offers.