The weight of traditions among the Afar is enormous. Hundreds of men still converge on the shores of Lake Assalé to extract salt, as did their parents and grandparents. With their small curved blade axes, these miners extract salt bricks at temperatures sometimes approaching 50°C. The camels and donkeys walk with lethargy in this hell, waiting to be loaded with their cargo of salt to leave in a single file at dawn, by the hundreds.

 

Not far from there, the Dallol volcano produces geological curiosities: acid hot springs, sulphur mountains, small gas geysers, acid basins. A show on a white background with an exceptional richness of colours of yellow, green and ochre red. And above all, this smell of pestilential sulphur that you can smell long before you get to the site, at the limit of what you can bear.

 

What can we say about this incredible spectacle of the Earth's belly pouring out at night from the mouth of Erta Alé, Ethiopia's most active volcano, with its permanent lava lake (since 1906). Terrifying. Exciting. The emotion is great, but the fatigue ends up taking me to this warm ground where the night will be short.