Towards the end of my time in London, Thomas got a job in Yemen. As part of this job, he received R&R every six weeks or so and, as flights to and from Saa’na were only out of Djibouti at the time, we decided that given that we had never been to this tiny dot on the map, this was obviously an excellent opportunity to do so. Most of Thomas’s colleagues were somewhat perplexed by this decision as the general consensus among the humanitarian workers in the area was that Djibouti is a country in which one would be best advised to minimize time spent. No surprises, we decided that we knew better. Happily, in this case, we were definitely right. While Djibouti may not be for everyone, it was definitely for us and we had an absolutely epic eight days in the country.
Djibouti City is perhaps not the most awe inspiring entry to the country and there are admittedly very few “tourist activities”. That said, we are pretty much always automatically happy on African soil and we occupied ourselves wandering about the respective “European” and “African” areas of the town and eating excellent Ethiopian food. We also spent some time arranging our activities for the next few days outside of the city. This consisted of a very easy experience arranging a diving outing through the Kempinski hotel (definitely feels like you are not in Djibouti walking into this place) and more complicated phone calls and meetings that seriously put my terrible French to the test to arrange an outing to the Danakil Depression.
Some random thoughts on Djibouti:
- Military bases. Djibouti has the greatest number of foreign military bases in the world. Given its strategic location and relative stability in comparison to other countries in the region, each of the United States, France, Great Britain, Japan, Saudi Arabia and China have military bases in Djibouti. When we were there, we did not really see anything of this as apparently at the time the Americans were not allowed off their base and this must have been the same for the other nationalities – other than the French, who we did see at some of the spots we went to.
- Fish. I ate the best fish of my life in Djibouti. This was made in a shack in the “African” part of Djibouti City in the Yemeni style. This involves butterflying a beast of a fish (basically some sort of sea monster I am certain), basting it in a bunch of spices, sticking it on a long hook and then lowering said hook into a massive urn-like oven with a roaring fire inside. One would expect that, after this treatment, the fish would emerge a charred mess. Not so. Served with local bread, a gazpacho-like tomato sauce and followed with some date/banana/honey desert (mousabaha (I think)), this fish was an easy first in my list of best seafood ever and warrants its own paragraph in this post.
- As with other countries in the horn of Africa and Yemen, Djibouti has an abiding obsession with qat. The men chew this fanatically and the country comes to a near halt every day in the mid-afternoon so that everyone can indulge in the daily qat ritual (namely, this constitutes the end of the working day pretty much and all the men sit about chewing the stuff for hours in order to get a bit of a high going on).
- One of the major tourist attractions in Djibouti is the chance to dive with whale sharks in the Gulf of Tadjoura. This can be done for a very short time in February each year, and we did not hit this time slot (said to be excellent though!). That said, we did do some diving in the gulf, there are some wrecks that are worthwhile and the lunch stop at Isle de Moucha is nice.
- Worth noting from a tourism perspective, Djibouti is a LOT more expensive than other countries in this region. While not awful if you are coming from Europe and working, we had friends that visited during longer travels in Africa, and they did not think much of the place as they did not want to pay the rather exorbitant prices for the limited activities that one could do for a fraction of a price in the surrounding countries. Also, as noted further below, what you get for your money in terms of food and accommodation is pretty basic.
On sorting a driver and managing to communicate that we wanted to head to the Danakil Depression for a night and then be dropped off past Lac Assal in Tadjoura area, we took off with some enthusiasm. We had been to the Danakil in Ethiopia a few years earlier and saw Dalol and Erte Ale. While we were aware that the Djiboutian side was not meant to be as spectacular, we nevertheless were convinced that this would be impressive and worth the outing and costly “tour”. First though, our driver needed to stock up on the obligatory qat supply for himself and Thomas (who had acquired something of a taste for the disgusting leaf during his time in Yemen). Both chewed furiously as we took off and I imagine our driver was mildly high for much of the two day trip.
Tours in francophone countries are always somewhat interesting for Thomas and I. I speak enough French to get by without worrying too much about sourcing the often non-existent English speaking guide – but not enough to communicate with any great competence. We always seem to end up with a guide/driver who speaks some broken French and no English. Thomas speaks no French at all. As a result, I am obviously, in these circumstances, a highly qualified translator and each of the guide and Thomas are entirely convinced that I will no doubt be able to convey whatever complicated no doubt philosophical concept they desire to discuss with the other party, no problems at all. Typically this works out okay for the most part, but will ultimately end up with certain frustrated situations in which I declare loudly to Thomas and/or said guide that I do not in fact SPEAK THE LANGUAGE!
On the way to Lac Abbe in the Danakil, we stopped at Dikhil. This is worth noting because: (i) our abiding maturity resulted in Thomas and I making Dikhil jokes for the rest of the day (read: trip); and (ii) a few years later in Abu Dhabi, I read Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thissiger (side note: anyone vaguely interested in travel should do this – highly recommend this book) and, on one of his first journeys he ventured into the Afar territory in Djibouti in order to find the source of the Awash river (the namesake of a rift valley national park we had previously visited in Ethiopia) and, no prizes for guessing which town he went through: Dikhil! Other than that, there is really nothing of interest in the town. The most exciting event was taking pictures of some camels and Thomas climbing on top of a truck to take some pictures of some very emaciated long horned cattle only to be told of soundly by the truck driver after the fact. Our guide assured us not to worry about it as the driver was no doubt Somali and, as such, was not very nice and should not be paid attention to anyway. We stared at this declaration a bit shocked, but appreciated that this behavior from the truck driver was not too different to what we had gotten used to in Somaliland a few years earlier. While the local Issa in Djibouti are a group of Somali, Somalilanders from across the border are not regarded with the same affection apparently.
Lac Abbe was every bit as spectacular as we expected with fantastic rock formations and dried lake beds. We stayed at a very basic camp and proceeded to get dive bombed by mosquitos through the gaping holes in our mosquito nets all night while sweating copiously into the uncleaned mattresses. Lac Abbe was also the site of our first experience of Djibouti’s answer to a tourist menu. Invariably when someone offered to include a meal/make us lunch in Djibouti it would comprise of the following: (i) mayonnaise salad (no real consistency of what was in this, other than the fact that it was doused enthusiastically in impressive quantities of mayonnaise); (ii) spaghetti with tomato sauce; and (iii) canned pineapple for desert. All three courses are considered necessary to the meal. One does not come for the culinary experience. That said, the scenery was definitely worth it and we spent a fantastic evening watching the sunset over the dried lake and consuming the excellent whiskey we had the foresight to bring along from London.
Covered in mosquito bites and lacking the coffee required to regain some level of conscious thought the next morning, we took off for Lac Assal. This is an incredible salt lake at the end of the Gulf of Tadjoura. Not much more to say about it really than the pictures. We declined to swim as it would not have been possible to shower afterwards and we were babies about it, but I imagine it would have been fun. Also, the drive to the lake included some fantastic completely barren volcanic scenery that was worth a visit alone.
After our stop at Lac Assal, we determined to negotiate the end point of our tour with the driver and requested to be dropped at Bankoale which we had heard was very pretty. This was summarily dismissed as apparently the road up to the town was too bad and would take several hours extra. We settled on another mountain town called Randa and got dropped off on the main drag. Randa is set in a stunning mountain landscape and, on arrival, we were promptly accosted by an ex-soldier with what we can only assume was some serious PTSD who tried to throw things at us to get us to leave. Luckily the other residents did not think much of his behavior and helped us find a lovely campement to stay for the night where the friendly proprietors promptly started preparing our mayonnaise salad and sourcing the requisite pineapple.
Not to be deterred by the lack of desire by our driver to take us to Bankoale, on perusing the guidebook overnight we realized that it was in fact possible to walk from Randa to Bankoale. However, feeling that we had done a fair amount the last few days, rather than rush off to reach the next village, we determined that the best part of the next morning should be spent finding coffee (see coffee shop below). We did indeed find coffee and also purchased some peanuts for breakfast. After purchasing the peanuts, I was somewhat perplexed when the lady from whom we had bought them, promptly took them back and consumed them all while I looked on in fascination. In any event, we took off late morning with a self-appointed guide who attached himself to us and who we ultimately agreed to pay to provide lunch for us at his family’s house in Bankoale. He quickly took off to purchase the canned pineapple. As the morning progressed, we enjoyed a lovely walk over the hills. However, we felt very sorry for our guide when a few hours later on the walk he misjudged a step and promptly flung the pineapple over a cliff never to be seen again. We assured him that we did not need the pineapple particularly and would still pay the same amount for lunch, but he was somewhat crestfallen at this loss. At any rate, we arrived in a delightful town and enjoyed lunch with our new friend sans pineapple. I then made the somewhat questionable decision to mention to Thomas that it was, in fact, also possible to walk onwards to another town, Dittlou.
After going back and forth over how long it would take us to walk to Dittlou, we determined that starting out at 3pm, we should be close enough by nightfall (7pm) in order to be okay. Off we went. At this point, no longer having any guide, we followed a general course on maps.me down a river bed and occasionally managed to get some gesticulated directions from camel herders in the vicinity who did not speak any French. As night approached, we became somewhat aware that we did not appear to be getting too much closer to the goal of Dittlou. Luckily, we came across a lovely gentleman who indicated the correct goat track to take across the hills and, as night fell, we came into relative civilization and villages. Not Dittlou, however. At this point we had hit upon a road and managed to determine that if we followed the road, we would eventually make it to Dittlou. Ultimately, it turned out to be more direct to wander up a river bed so we ended up using our phone as a compass and wandering through the pitch black Djiboutain countryside until we eventually stumbled into the (actually quite lovely) Dittlou campement. Much to the extreme shock and amusement of the camp owners and the French family visiting, we emerged out of the darkness long after sunset with no vehicle and no guide. We were entirely thrilled with ourselves. Not only had we not had to camp on a mountainside until morning, we had happened upon an absolutely amazing campement – showers, hot food, no mayonnaise salad! Nailed it.
On waking the next morning, we realized that we had basically wandered from the semi-arid planes into a mountainous jungle. There was lush greenery, monkeys, weaver birds and waterfalls surrounding us. Not bad at all. The lovely owner took pity on us and dropped us in Tadjoura later in the day. He even stopped for us to purchase a ridiculously large basket of such excellent quality that multiple people stopped me to compliment me on it in Addis airport en route home to London (“Sister, that is a very good basket” – and, indeed, it is).
Tadjoura is a very cute town with not much to do, but a lovely beach nearby at the overpriced Sable Blanc (the closest thing Djibouti has to a resort). After our more adventurous pursuits, we spent a few days at the beach and in Tadjoura and took a ferry back to Djibouti City. Overall, for a pinhead sized country, Djibouti really packed a punch. Volcanic wastelands, salt lakes, diving, stunning beaches, mountains, jungles and all the mayonnaise salad you can handle all manage to (somehow) fit into this minuscule area.
February 2017