Information for adventurous trips to Danakil, salt desert and characteristics of the land where the Afar people live, best times to go.
Danakil tourism
Danakil constitutes the northern part of the triangle of Afar, an extensive depression formed by salt and lava deserts, active volcanoes and salt lakes, which delineate an unreal landscape of great charm, east Africa region extended between Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti. , very interesting from a geological and anthropological point of view.
It is one of the most inaccessible places on earth, with temperatures over 40 ° C, a 600 km2 salt desert, the legacy of a geological cataclysm that occurred 80 thousand years ago, when the area was submerged by the sea, a scenario destined to to repeat itself in a million-year span of time, when the territory will be a new ocean.
This is the land of the mythical Afar or Dancali, a people tempered by the difficulties of the territory and the climate.
They are shepherds and breeders who move according to the rains and the short fertility of the pastures, live in lonely villages formed by huts with a hemispherical shape, which can be easily dismantled and transported, made with palm leaf mats.
For millennia, the Afar have been breeding camels and selling salt obtained from the soil, from the Ethiopian plateau they have come down with camels in Indian rows, along the paths of the salt caravans, to the Piana del Sale, which is over one hundred meters below sea, where there are workers who extract and cut the salt, then go up with the camels loaded with bricks of salt to be brought to the market to be sold.
A little further south of the plain of Sale begins the chain of volcanoes Erta Ale, a mountain that smokes, in whose central part stands the volcano that gives its name to the chain, 613 meters high and reachable on foot.
The excursion begins in the late afternoon, when the sun is more forgiving, you need to bring plenty of water and everything you need to spend a night on the top of Erta Ale to admire the show.
Visiting the Danakil is a very adventurous journey and requires a lot of adaptation spirit, for the high danger of the area local drivers and guides are needed to travel, as well as an armed escort.
The suitable months to visit Danakil are November, December and January.
