Story and Photography by: Dale R Morris, Travel Africa
An armed soldier, attired in military fatigues and carrying an AK47, totters cautiously over a bed of yellow sulphur crystals, paying attention not to trip into one of the many bright-green acid pools in this otherworldly landscape. If he were to slip, he would either boil to death or slowly dissolve.
“Not once did I see a plant, insect or anything else resembling life.”
Well, that’s what Hammed, my Afar tribal guide, tells me. “See that guy over there?” he says, pointing to the soldier standing atop a mushroom-shaped geyser. “He fell through a deceptively thin crust of minerals a few years back and lost all the skin on one of his legs. That’s why he walks with a limp.”
Here among the sulphur lakes, crystal shelves and hissing vents of Ethiopia’s Danakil Depression, you had better watch where you step.
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