Massawa

Massawa is Eritrea's port and one of the hottest towns on Earth, and it is built on two islands tied to the mainland by causeways: on Massawa Island the old town of the Ottomans and the Egyptians, coral-block houses with wooden balconies and shaded arcades, the mosque of Sheikh Hanafi from the fifteenth century, the ruins of the imperial palace that Haile Selassie used and Ethiopian bombs finished in 1990, the domed Banco d'Italia and the port's quays; on Taulud, the Italian villas and the hotels of the colonial resort; and, on the mainland, the terminus of the steam railway that comes down a hundred and eighteen kilometres and two thousand one hundred and thirty metres from Asmara through tunnels and switchbacks, and the tanks left as a memorial to the battle of February 1990 that took the port and turned the war. Off the coast the Dahlak archipelago has two hundred islands, reefs and dolphins; north, Gurgusum is the beach.

The traveller comes down from Asmara — by the steam train when it is chartered, otherwise by the road that drops through the clouds in three hours — with the travel permit that Asmara issues, and sleeps on Taulud; walks the old island at dusk and at dawn, when the heat allows, from arcade to arcade, the mosque, the palace shell, the port; eats fish grilled in the Yemeni way at a table in the street; swims at Gurgusum or takes a boat to the Dahlak for a day of reef and empty sand; visits the tanks and the Fenkil memorial with someone old enough to remember; and drinks tea under the arcades until the sun goes, which is when Massawa comes out of its houses.

The Guide's honesty, gently: Eritrea asks patience at every door — the visa takes homework, the permit to leave Asmara is real and checked at the road, cash is the economy and the exchange is formal, and the internet is scarce —; the prudent traveller checks conditions with their chancellery and travels with an operator who knows the terrain; the heat is not a figure of speech — from May to September the town is a furnace and everything happens at night; the old town is beautiful and half-ruined, and the war's scars are part of it — photograph with care and ask; the train runs when a group charters it, not on a timetable; and the reward for all of it is a Red Sea town that time and tourism have both left alone, in a country that keeps its own hours.