Djibouti - a country located between Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea in East Africa on the Gulf of Aden. On the pictures in order: Maskali islet (14km from Djibouti city), Lac Assale - It appears that this lake is the 2nd most saline lake in the world... after Canada's Patience. Indeed the water is bitter and the "beach sand" is pure salt. It is exploited by the natives who crush it with pickaxes and load it in bags... Everything on the shore is covered with salt. Some other world. There is supposedly no life in the water. Maybe there are desalination plants, but I saw people with pickaxes crushing salt on the "beach" in the sun. Lac Abee - we arrived there after a 3.5h drive through the desert, without exaggeration it was not a "life" expedition. It resembled a Moroccan hamada (rocky desert) - two villages on the way, camels, donkeys, goats... What they feed on is a mystery. We arrived at about 5 p.m., so it was an hour until sunset. I wandered around and looked at the landscape with delight. These geological formations are unique in the world. I finally found my "point of view". I set up my camera on a tripod and waited - 40 minutes for the sun to set - I had a visualized photo. This is what I often tell my students about.... The wind was strong, it lifted the sand, the landscape started to be filmy, out of focus, gray, and the sun that was descending to a place I noticed All of me was covered in sand. Well, we had to wait. But my imagination was working "I saw" the photos. On the pictures are the surroundings of the lake LAC ABBE lying on the Afar depression. Across the lake passes the Djiboutian-Ethiopian border. The oldest human fossils have been found in this region - some paleontologists believe this is the cradle of civilization. Because there is a junction of tectonic plates under the ground, which are pulling apart as a result, the earth's crust is extremely thin there. Underwater springs allow magma to come out through fissures in the bottom. This is how giant travertine chimneys have been formed for thousands of years - which emerged from the water after its level dropped by two-thirds in 1950. The area around the lake is one of the hottest (during the year) places on Earth (in winter about 30 degrees in summer 45 degrees). This is the only such place on Earth - perhaps similar formations are on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. (I found the information in the BBC Travel article). The lake is inhabited by flamingos ... which I photographed just after sunrise. Ardoukoba - 100 km from the city of Djibouti is located Ardoukoba rift system. The eruption of Ardoukoba on November 7, 1978 after a week of seismic shaking was the first in 3000 years. A crater 30 meters wide and 100 meters high was formed. Ash emissions reached a height of 300 meters, two lava flows were produced. A small cinder cone was formed, 25 smaller fissures opened. The Ardoukoba rift is 17 kilometers wide and 800 meters deep." I might add from myself that you can drive an ATV relatively close to the crater. From its crown there is a beautiful view of Lac Assale, among others. The peak of the volcano is at 298 meters above sea level. The center looks like a funnel with rather steep walls plugged with lava in chunks. On the slopes of the volcano there are many holes resembling entrances to caves. And everywhere lava, whose texture can be photographed for hours (which unfortunately I did not have).