Limestone chimneys up to 50 metres tall standing out of a salt flat with steam coming out of the tops of them. They form where the lake water meets a deeper geothermal fluid and the minerals drop out, and they sit at the Afar triple junction, the place where three tectonic plates are pulling away from each other, which is as close as the surface of the Earth gets to showing you its own machinery. The lake is the end of the road for the Awash river, 320 km2 and 37 metres deep at most, with salt flats 10 km wide along the southern shores and flamingos on the water. Dama Ali, a dormant volcano, stands 1,068 metres on the northwest shore. It is shrinking: by 1984 it was down to two thirds of its 1940 surface, from drought and from irrigation taking the Awash upstream. Straddles the Djibouti and Ethiopia border.
Afar, Djibouti
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