below sea level in the Danakil Depression

Carrying straight on from Kuwait, with not enough time to finish mentally processing my Iraq holiday, I arrived in Addis Ababa and met some of my new tour companions as we boarded the internal flight to Semera.  Although I didn't meet two of them until I got into a car the next morning for the start of three days of sharing a vehicle ... wondering if I would have got into that particular car if I had known.

For we were starting a three-day trip into the Danakil region of northern Ethiopia that included on the first day a six-hour drive along what has been described as the worst road in the world, bumping over the lava field iin the picture above, to cover a distance of just 80km.  Thankfully I enjoy road journeys.  Maybe in part because I've never driven, and so have no issues with someone else being 'in control', but I get pleasure from looking out of a window at the scenery, and I rarely experience any physical discomfort, no matter how long the journey.

Here I was confined to the back of the car, three of us rotating so that each got to sit in the middle as well as spending time looking out of the side windows.  Why was I confined to the back?  Well ... Adam, one of the two Americans in the car, took the front seat and said that he got car sick if he sat in the back.  His sidekick looked at me, and although expressionless, he seemed to be communicating that this was not true ... but what can you do?  Accuse someone you've just met of lying?  Force them to take their turn in the back with the risk that they are, in fact, sick??  So Adam sat in the front for three days, attached his phone to the car charger in such a way that we had his playlists entertaining us for three days, and quite early on gave the first of his many outbursts (not related in any way to the conversation in this first instance) against Joe Biden.

I decided to ask him, stressing that I wasn't trying to turn the conversation to politics, whether he was a Trump supporter or a disappointed Democrat.  He was a Trump supporter, and he held forth on politics for much of the next three days, egged on occasionally by his sidekick.  It was actually very interesting and I did learn from it.  The two of them also ribbed eachother repeatedly about their past shared experiences in the US military (although I later learnt that they met in a military prison where they were both serving time for insubordination!) and their 'identities' (rich white Jew and African-American), and Adam checked periodically that we were still the middle car, as apparently in an attack those in the front car are most likely to be killed or wounded and those in the back car to be kidnapped ... and he jumped a mile when I sneezed once as he thought it sounded like a missile flying past...

Meanwhile I tried to remember to look at the scenery, which was amazing.  We were in one of the lowest places on land (132m below sea level, apparently) and besides the lava, salt canyons and extensive salt pans, there were other stunning mineral sites.  I read that in the hottest, most acidic pools, sulphur and salt create a neon yellow shade, while the cooler, more turquoise-coloured pools are laced with copper.  It was unlike anything I've seen anywhere else.  I think even the Americans were impressed, despite Adam's mutterings that he should have chartered a helicopter to get there.

For two nights we slept out under the stars (and a
very bright moon) - accompanied by Adam moaning that he needed his air conditioning and his daily shower.  On the second day we climbed up to the crater of Erta Arle volcano and, for those of us who wanted to (guess who didn't?), a second ascent in the dark on the final day to see the lava in the dark and then the sunrise from the rim.  Another absolutely stunning sight.