Where do you want to go on your holidays? How about a place about the size of the Serengeti National Park, a broad, largely flat expanse which nature has painted in extraordinary greens, yellows, oranges and glossy whites – a truly magical landscape to behold?
There’s just one or two catches. Well quite a few, in fact. It’s hotter than Hades, the lakes are full of acid and nothing can live here.
Welcome to the Gateway to Hell, otherwise known as the Danakil Depression.
Where is the Danakil Depression?
Located in northern Ethiopia, close to the border with Eritrea, parts of Danakil lie more than 100m below sea level and is a location where three large tectonic plates are pulling apart, exposing the deadly guts of the earth in the shape of magma pools and boiling, bubbling geysers – pulling back the curtain on what the planet we live on is really like.
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And, yes, you can visit this present-day underworld, if you want. Lots of people do.
Local tribespeople mine salt in the depression – there are 750 registered miners extracting 1.3m tonnes of it every year.
It is becoming an increasing draw for scientists, who have found that – despite the harsh, alien conditions – some bacteria do survive here. They call them polyextremeophiles. They even found them in a lake where the ph was 0, which reveals more about how and where life can survive, not just on Earth but potentially on other planets too.
- Could any animals live on other planets?
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They are all that can survive, however. At a lake known as Gaet’Ale, dead insects and birds can be found lying nearby. What’s killed them is the carbon dioxide emissions, which stay close to the ground – while humans can just about survive here, any livings thing that’s within a foot of ground level is simply breathing in too much of this gas and therefore not enough oxygen.
If you’re not a miner or a scientist, you can go also visit Danakil. You can walk along the flank of the Erta Ale volcano and even stand on the rim of its caldera.
All the while, you’ll be assailed by the colours of a world you’ve never encountered before, as close to visiting another planet as you’re ever likely to get.
The sulphur springs of Dallol are the piece de resistance of this godforsaken place. Here, the average – average – temperature exceeds 46˚C and the boiling hot magma just below the surface forces up salt, sulphur, potash and other minerals, and the earth surface looks as if someone has come along and daubed it with a paintbrush.
