Danakil tour - Erta Ale, Ethiopia

The wifi didn't work at the Planet Hotel, so we had had the front desk contact ETT for us to find out what time to be ready for pickup in the morning.

They had said 7:30am but only showed up at 8:30am, so we could have slept in a bit more.

We drove to the ETT office, and met Chang, a Korean on a 11-month trip. He joined us in the Toyota 4WD, just the three of us and the driver in the air conditioned car, which was great.

Our itinerary was rearranged to group us with other tourists, and we met up with two other Toyotas to start the excursion to Erta Ale, one of four lava lakes in the world. Nine tourists is a good size for a group - according to our guide, groups can sometimes be as large as 40 people.

Also in our group was a couple from Seattle, a Montrealer, a German and a German / Italian couple. We were all about the same age except for Chang who was mid-20s. It was interesting that most of us had picked Ethiopia as a destination by googling interesting places to visit - for half (like us) it was Lalibela that first attracted us to Ethiopia, and for the others it was Erta Ale.

There were numerous stops to get through all the bureaucracy (ETT does a great job of this), including permits and picking up the regional police for protection. They were armed, but unlike the Simien trek this really was for protection.

We offroaded and drove through sand plains. It looked like a rally car race with three vehicles leaving dust trails behind. There was also a 4th vehicle with the police and local scouts.

The last part of the drive is what the LP describes as the worst road in the world, and it's definitely the worst road I've been on. It's only 6.5km, but takes 90 minutes. It's over broken hardened lava, with sandy spots thrown in to take away traction. The ETT vehicles handled it great, and the drivers know what they're doing. The vehicles are also air conditioned so we didn't have to worry about the dust. It was reaching 35C+ driving over the black lava rocks in the sun (it gets hotter in the summer).

We had tea and snacks, waiting for 4pm and cooler air before starting the 9.5km walk up to the crater rim of Erta Ale.

Camels carried our mattress, dinner, and water bottles for the morning. We had to carry everything else - sleeping bag, 2L water for the walk up, camera, toiletries, and flashlight. Our big packs remained at camp, locked safely in the vehicle. My day pack is just for the city, so it was a little awkward - I should have brought a larger daypack for this trip based on the number of excursions.

And then we were off: nine tourists, the ETT guide, a local guide, and two armed scouts. The local guide was needed closer to the rim as the hardened lava is hollow (when lava flows, the outside cools and hardens, and the inside continues to flow, leaving hollow spots) and it's possible to go off-path and put your foot through the hardened lava and into a hole or worse. In some places near the top you could feel the heat rising through gaps.

It takes in average three hours to reach the top but our group did it in 2:20. As the sun set, the moon rose, almost full, and so it was possible to see without a flashlight. My batteries were dying so I just walked by moonlight.

We reached the camp where we would sleep, and had our first view of Erta Ale from the top of the outer rim. At night, the fumes rising from the crater are illuminated red by the bubbling lava. Occasionally there's more activity that sends red sparks flying up above the height of the rim.

It's a 10 minute walk to the inner crater, and inside is molten lava bubbling away. It's really cool to see, one of the top things in the world to see. (Abuna Yemata Guh was short-lived as the top thing I've seen in Ethiopia :) ).

We were standing about 10 feet from the edge of the crater, and the heat from the molten lava was so great I had to stand back a bit. We were the first group at the top and had the whole thing to ourselves. (That's another thing ETT does well - they get their groups to all the sites first). Our guide explained that we had to watch the direction of the smoke and always stand upwind - once, the wind changed a little quickly and we were all coughing and gagging from the sulphur fumes.

We all watched the red hot lava move around slowly in the crater, like tectonic plates on a much smaller scale. The activity ebbed and flowed. It was very active when we first arrived, and then we were very lucky to see part of the opposing wall collapse into the crater! It caused slow motion waves through the crater, and we all took a few frightened steps back, although I'm not sure a couple feet would have made a difference from whatever we were backing away from. About five minutes later, a bit more of the crater wall again caved in. Heather said it reminded her of the glaciers calving at Perito Merino glacier.

We found out how lucky we were to have witnessed the wall falling in, as we we didn't see such activity again over the next 90 minutes. In fact, it seemed almost boring when the other groups arrived and there was just slow-moving lava not doing much exploding :)

It was very hypnotic, like watching a very large campfire. I put my camera burst mode to capture the sparks from mini eruptions, and took over 500 pics.

Finally it was time to walk back to the outer rim, where dinner was waiting. More pasta. We slept in little enclaves with stones piled in a semi-cirlcle about a foot high to protect us from blowing sand. It wasn't windy so that wasn't an issue that night. It was the first time Heather or I had slept out under the stars - we were both dreading the idea of creepy-crawlies right beside us. It was also fairly polluted at the camp - lots of empty water bottles and used toilet paper blowing about, which was almost as gross as the idea of creepy crawlies.

We went to bed right after dinner, around 10:30pm. We were sleeping on a 15* slope on the side of the volcano and so kept in sliding down off the mattress.

It was cool to see the almost-full moon, which obscured the stars, but at least we had a bit of light.

At 4:30am we were awakened by our guide so that we could watch the sunrise from the crater rim. We were back at the crater by 5am, and watched mesmerized again, this time with the sky slowly brightening. The sun had risen before any other groups reached the crater, I'm glad ETT runs a schedule to get you to the cool views, even if it means getting up at 4:30am.

With the full sunlight, Erta Ale has a very different look. Instead of glowing red, it now looked black, with red polygonic seams running through.

We had just started back down to the vehicles for breakfast when there was a burst of activity so we watched for another five minutes and took another hundred pics, and then said goodbye to the volcano.

It took us almost as long to walk down as up, I guess we were all keen on getting to the top to see Erta Ale last night. With the daylight we could see more garbage, and also how dangerous the path is. New volcanic rock is very sharp, and a little trip could cause a lot of damage. Heather did have a little stumble in the night and was fortunate to escape with a slight scrape to her knee, and ripped pants. I don't know how we walked up with just moonlight.

Breakfast was good - scrambled eggs, pancakes, honey and the ever-present marmalade.

Next up was the drive back over the worst road in the world, and then to a village where we had lunch. Three of us (me, Heather and Chang) still had two days left of the tour, and were given the option to go back into Mekele, or stay in a village. Heather and I were looking forward to a shower and nice bed so opted for Mekele. The other six people had already completed the other two days, and so they just returned to Mekele to finish.

We all got together for dinner, everyone smelling and looking much better. Ended up at a local pizza joint, that had a real pizza oven, and made their own dough tossing it in the air. It wasn't bad, even the Italian in the group gave his approval.

We were all tired having risen at 4:30am, so it was a short night. Said our goodbyes and went to our hotels.