There are some places where the Earth makes its true nature known. It is hard not to be fascinated by the utter weirdness and danger of these spots, where the hot, stinking, belching core of our home planet thrusts itself into our vision.
Dallol means “colorful stone” in Afar. This name makes me think that the Afar people have a strong penchant for understatement. The places looks like a Starburst storage facility melted by the heat of a nuclear apocaclypse and smells like a New Zealand dairy farm.
To get there, you spend two hot, toilet-less days in a car with other tourists (but worry not, there is a certain stretch of road with a few tiny bushes to squat behind- the only possible bathroom stop). Your fellow tourists might just end up being a colorful, extremely off-color Israeli couple. Here are some of the top highlights of Drole, husband of Shoshi, the couple we ended up sharing a car with:
- Introduces himself to Tekeste, our driver, as Paul. “You can’t pronounce my real name!” Tekeste wants to try and Drole goes “OK, say Droooouuuoooollllll.” Tekeste nails the pronunciation and we set off.
- Drole learns that the Afar peole are nomadic Muslims and insists that they must be Bedouins. Tekeste tells him that they are different. Drole rolls his eyes and says something to Shoshi. The only word I can understand is “Bedouin.”
- Constantly asks how much something costs in Ethiopia and reports the price of the item in Israel. It’s always 3x as much in Israel. In this way he proves that people in Ethiopia are very lucky.
- Often describes his disgust at the roadside trash, framed as a national moral failing.
- Incredulously tells the story of eating dinner at a fancy hotel, and seeing rich, dressed-up Ethiopian women eating with their hands.
- Frequently asks how much we paid for various things, delightedly reporting that he got a better deal.
It was all very worth it. Dallol, and the wider Danakil Depression, was simply mind-blowing. Nothing I have seen compares to it. Crunching over that impossible land is a full-sensory optical illusion. Chalk it up as one more unique memory from this vast, diverse continent, shared with the best possible company.
