Good news! Thanks to Messina shipping lines and DP World, the three expedition Landies, the kit and the seven-strong expedition team have all arrived safely at Djibouti Port (thank God no pirates!) We were last here as part of our Outside Edge Expedition to track the outline of Africa. It’s good to be back.

The team finds themselves on the banks of Djibouti’s Lake Assal, deepest point on the continent at -155 meter below sea level, for the start of their odyssey to follow the Great African Rift Valley. With an 80 m thick salt crust in about one third of the lake and about 380 grams of salt per litre of water, Lake Assal is the saltiest body of water on the planet. Ethiopia’s Danakil, here we come.

And so as the world’s ‘glitterati’ descend on Durban’s ‘COP’ 17 Summit on how to slow climate change and reach their agreed goal “to limit the average global temperature rise to 2°C…”, we find ourselves in Ethiopia’s Danakil, hottest place on earth!; close to drought stricken famine rid Somalia on the Horn of Africa. Let’s hope for peace and a green revolution!

Ethiopian greetings from remote Afar villages where the Awash River ends its journey. Malaria is bad here and we continue with our United Against Malaria, Rite To Sight and LifeStraw campaigns. Tough going, we travel with armed militia. – we’ll keep you posted.

Whilst going through a bit of research about our first expedition chapter, we uncover this interesting bit of information… The Danakil, also known as the Afars, used to be in the habit of castrating and murdering intruders into their territory. A young man could only marry when he had overcome an adversary and cut off his testicles as a trophy. The early British explorer Wilfred Thesiger found himself in a few sticky situations in which he managed to preserve both his composure and his testicles and win over the Afars. Hopefully we’ll be able to do the same – we’ll keep you posted.

Greetings from Erta Ale the most active volcano in Africa. With armed guards and a camel to carry the water we walked through the night to avoid the fierce heat of the Danakil Depression to stand on the rim of an erupting lava lake. None of the expedition team has witnessed anything like this in their lives before.

To propitiate the spirits of our Rift Valley odyssey, we toss a silver coin into the bubbling caldera. Several earthquakes have been recorded in the vicinity of Erta Ale suggesting that a major eruption maybe imminent. It's tough going back to base camp, hard underfoot over blistering volcanic landscape.

Here people survive by drinking what ever water they can find be it stagnant pools or puddles left over from the last rain. Later we distribute LifeStraws to Afar communities. Each LifeStraw filters a thousand liters of clean drinking water. It is fulfilling to improve lives through adventure`- thank you Nikon for making it possible. We’ll keep you posted.
Visit www.vestergaard-frandsen.com/lifestraw for more on LifeStraws.

Our Rift Valley humanitarian journey continues. Behind us now is Djibouti and Lake Assal (lowest point in Africa) Deset island (lowest island in the world) and Erta Ale (Africa's most active volcano) Now we must cross the dangerous Danakil desert. We check water, fuel and supplies. Our guide Ali Abdella has organised two men each with a Kalashnikov (AK 47). The Danakil's climatic inhospitality is mirrored by the reputation of its nomadic Afar inhabitants, who as recently as the Italian occupation in 1937 had the somewhat discouraging custom of welcoming strangers by lopping of their testicles. Hope we keep ours!

Flash floods in the distant highlands have made part of the Danakil track impassable and we are having to navigate by the seat of our pants – very difficult when Ross who is navigating has got dysentery and is being fed antibiotics and Rehidrate. With tyres down to 1 bar we grind through choking powder soft dust and then pump them hard again to bounce over ancient solidified lava flows. It is incredibly tough on man and machine. Get lost out here and that will be the last you hear from us. We’ll keep you posted…

The Zen of Travel is with us. We find the salt caravan route to Hamed Ela. Our next objective is to cross the actual Danakil Depression – officially the hottest place on earth, but it's not that easy. This close to Eritrea security is tight and already half a dozen AK47- toting freeloaders are wanting to make a quick buck by securing our safety. We’ll keep you posted.

Somehow it works out! For a fee of 600 Birr the military give us an escort of three well-armed camouflage clad soldiers. In the three Nikon branded Rift Valley Expedition Landies we race across the Danakil Depression. Miss the track, break through the salt crust, and it’s tickets. Expedition member and epic adventurer Mike Nixon has left ahead of us on his mountain bike, a speck in the distant heat haze, as he peddles against a headwind on the hottest place on earth. To our knowledge it’s a world first, no other mountain biker has been crazy enough to crisscross the Danakil all the way from Djibouti. His early morning departures from camp and the visuals from a small camera attached to his cycling helmet add an exciting element to the adventure. We’re trying to get to another Rift Valley icon in this lunar landscape studded with active volcanoes. This time to the multi coloured sulpher springs of Dallol. The soldiers point across to Eritrea and warn us that we mustn’t delay.

Leaving one of the soldiers with the Landies we cross a blistering hot solidified lava flow on foot to reach Dallol – it’s as if we’re on another planet as we step gingerly through a surreal bubbling, multi-hued field of sulpherous hot springs studded with steaming conical vents, caramel coloured mushroom shapes and rippled rock formations. These craters are the lowest known subaerial volcanic vents in the world. The area hisses and steams, the heat is unbearable – we undoubtedly stand at the hottest place on earth.

From the Dallol hot springs in the Danakil Depression, Ali the Afar expedition interpreter collects some hot, bright orange coloured water for the symbolic calabash that we are carrying down Africa’s Great Rift Valley. Later that afternoon, closer to Eritrea, warm oily green water from a salt encrusted pool of bubbling geezers is added to the Zulu calabash mix. Over twelve months, historic sip-fills of water will be added from every Rift Valley lake and waterway. The Ethiopian soldiers are getting edgy – too close to Eritrea and they want us off the salt flats before dark. ‘Make sense, especially as this place is also said to be haunted at night by a devil spirit called Abu Lalu.’ We’re at -116 metres. Ross is still struggling with dysentery. Hell in this heat.

On our way off the Danakil Depression, we pass hundreds of cameleers with their camels, making their way to the salt flats to cut tablets of trade salt. Eugene in the big Land Rover 130 radios in to tell us that he’s found a place to camp on the banks of a river fed from the mountains of the Rift Valley escarpment high above us. It’s our first bath in weeks. We wash the desert dust from our bodies and around a hardwood fire, under a canopy of Rift Valley stars, we drink a ‘Captain’s toast’ to the fact that we’d survived the Danakil Depression. Zulu expedition member Willie Gwebu knocks up a camel stew spiced with some hot Nando’s sauce. Ross keeps down a bowl of oats with goat milk – he’s getting better – Bloody luxury.

In first and second gear, low ratio, following the salt caravan route, we climb the Landies out of the Danakil to reach the Tigrean capital of Mekele where we drop off expedition volunteer Andre Bredenkamp who needs to fly back to Cape Town. Andre, together with expedition member Mike Nixon, has climbed the seven highest peaks of the world. He’s a great adventurer and we’ll miss his eccentricity, come-what-may-attitude and good humour around the campfire. He promised to join up for another of these crazy Rift Valley chapters. Our mission is to now experience the Northern Rift Valley escarpment of the Afar Triangle – We’ll keep you posted.

On this expedition we’ve climbed from the lowest point on the continent to now travel along the 2000 metre high edge of the Rift Valley escarpment. Wrapped in jackets and beanies, it’s another world. For the Disco 4’s, it’s manual shift, dropping gears through the bends. In the big 130, it’s a juggle of clutch, gears and brakes. In Ethiopia they drive on the left and so our front passenger becomes a conductor shouting ‘All clear!’ or ‘No! Get in!’ as we dodge old Fiat trucks, livestock and pedestrians through a succession of hundreds of dizzying hairpin bends and mountain passes that make up the most awesome stretch of road in Ethiopia. We zigzag through the hills around Maychw which on 31st March 1936 were the scene of the final decisive battle in Mussolini’s bid to conquer Ethiopia which led to the 1936-1941 Italian occupation, the only period in its 3000-year history when outsiders ruled Ethiopia. It’s wonderful to feel cold.

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On every expedition we carry a Scroll of Peace and Goodwill. These have been messaged by chiefs, ambassadors, government officials, governors, Nobel Peace Prize laureates Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and even on one occasion by a near naked Himba girl who endorsed the scroll with a simple red-ochered handprint. Today’s message is from an Afar tribe M.P. who scribbles… ‘Welcome to the land of Lucy…’ – he’s referring to the 1974 discovery of an almost complete 3.5 million years old hominid skeleton named ‘Lucy’ – the song ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ was playing in the archeologists’ camp shortly after the find close to where our convoy of three expedition Land Rovers now travel in a cloud of dust along the floor of the Rift Valley’s Afar triangle. It’s close to sunset but Ali our guide warns us that it’s too dangerous to camp wild in this area. ‘There’s bad blood between the Issa and the Afar – it’s about livestock, available water and grazing rights.’ We push on into the night – we’ll keep you posted.

Greetings again from the Horn of Africa – the fascinating area that contains the countries of Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia. Still zigzagging down the Great African Rift Valley we reach Awash Station on the old 1929 French-built railway line that joins Addis Ababa to Djibouti. The train no longer operates but we find rooms in the old Greek owned railway hotel called ‘Buffet Awash’. It was from here in 1932 that the great British explorer Wilfred Thesiger departed in a caravan of 22 camels, 32 men, some Somali cameleers, 15 khaki clad soldiers and an Afar hostage to ensure their safety. It is hard to believe that as recently as 1932 no expedition had survived a journey through these still dangerous lands of the Afar tribe who collected the testicles of their enemies as trophies. Our next objective is a 300km dash through the lands of the Nilotic Oromo people (also known as the Galla) to the ancient walled city of Harar high up on the opposite Rift Valley escarpment overlooking Djibouti, Somaliland and the Danakil plains. We’ll keep you posted.

For many years I’ve dreamt about one day reaching the ancient fortified trade terminus of Harar. Considered to be the fourth holy city of Islam after Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. On foot we pass through the Showa Gate, enclosed by the crumbling medieval walls, over 300 cobbled alleyways connect the rabbit warren of hobgoblin stalls, shops, white washed homes, mosques, shrines and markets that are home to some 20 thousand Harari inhabitants. What’s so cool about this place is just how friendly and relaxed everybody is. In the heat of the afternoon the men gather in the shade to chew the green narcotic ‘leaves of paradise’ called chat or qat. Here on the Horn of Africa is a way of life. Old men whose teeth have rotted away, resort to using a small mortar and pestle to pound a green ‘chat’ paste which they rub onto their gums. I’d prefer to gargle with Captain Morgan,’ says Mike Nixon with a grin.

The first European to enter the then ‘forbidden city’ was the British explorer Richard Burton, who trekked from Berberer on the Somali coast in 1855. He survived to write that Harar was a great ‘halfway house’ for slave caravans, making their way from the interior to the Red Sea. His notes on the local honey-wine read… This is the Abyssinian “Tej… some write it “Zatsh.” At Harar it is made of honey dissolved in hot water, strained and fermented for seven days with the bark of the Kudidah tree. Every traveller has praised the honey-wine…, and some have not scrupled to prefer it to champagne. It exhilarates, excites and acts as an aphrodisiac; the consequence is, that at Harar all men, pagans, sages, priests and rulers drink it… We try it, it makes us talk loudly with numerous visits to the loo – we’ll keep you posted.

Still in the old walled city of Harar, Mashozi bargains for colourful cloth and a curved Afar dagger in a decorated leather scabbard whilst I buy camel meat from the Muslim market, where the butcher throws bits of intestine into the air to be caught by swooping yellow-billed kites.

Later we gather in the town square to drink strong black Ethiopian coffee from small china cups. (Harar coffee is said to be the best in the world.) That’s when ‘Ali the Afar’ tells us about the other Harar residents who at night gather at the edge of Jugal (the other name for the walled city) waiting for the humans to go to sleep so that they can prowl the streets. We’ll keep you posted.

‘Even the walls of the city have low doorways that allow the hyenas to pass,’ says Ali. ‘Hyenas are part of life here, they keep out the bad spirits (Djinns) and at night they eat the scraps and the garbage left out for them. They don’t trouble the people. There’s even man who feeds them meat with his own mouth.’ And so as night falls over the walled city of Harar we find ourselves back in the Land Rovers on our way to meet ‘Abbas the Hyena Man who’ve taken over from his father Yusuf who was the hyena man for 40 years! We don’t know what to expect.

With only the expedition Land Rover’s headlights to illuminate the crazy scene, we watch in amazement as Abbas the Hyena Man calls into the night. There’s that familiar whooping sound and hyena eyes shine in the dark, soon they are all around us. It’s breeding season so we must be careful, says Abbas, as the alpha male comes forward to snatch a piece of rotten camel meat from the end of a short stick held between Abbas’s teeth. He shouts out the carnivores’ names and I scribble in the expedition journal as he calls: Chalto! Chala! Ibsa! Ipsito! Jambo! Bruse! … and many more. Then the expedition members Mike Nixon and Willie Gwebu give it a go, the hyenas coming forward to greedily snatch the meat from their mouths – It’s bloody scary!. ‘Come, it’s your turn Pops, I need a piece to camera,’ says Ross. I shit myself! Sitting on a rock, the massively strong spotted hyenas all around me. Abbas parades the meat in front of my face – I hear the snap of their powerful jaws and smell the rotten meat. According to legend these wild hyenas are fed in good times so that in times of drought they won’t attack livestock or people (that’s if you’re not possessed by an evil Djinn). ‘Careful,’ says Mashozi, ‘you never know what they can find in your beard.’ So much still to see and do – we’ll keep you posted.

We survive the hyenas of Harar and back on the floor of the Great African Rift Valley at Awash, Mike takes off early by mountain bike and we do some Rite to Sight, Life Straws and United Against Malaria work with the local community. So continuing to use the adventure to improve lives. We meet up with Mike in the heat of the day. He’s sitting under an acacia tree playing bottle top drafts with Awash National Park rangers. They won’t let him ride any further. It appears there’s a danger of lions. Today is his last ride on this Rift Valley chapter. He’s been great company and will, I’m sure, be back. An armed ranger escorts us to the waterfalls on the Awash River below which there cruises a massive crocodile. We add some water to the calabash and then further down the Rift we add a sipfull of Lake Beseka water. It’s a beautiful area. Above the black lava encrusted lake there looms the active volcano of Fanteller and on the surrounding yellow grass plains we see Beisa oryx, long necked gerenuk and our first ever Soemmerings gazelle. These are the lands of the fierce Kereyu tribe and the men are noted for their hairstyles of short on top and huge afro on the sides. ‘Be careful taking photographs,’ warns Ali.

We’re feeling the pace, all of us a bit travel worn. But everybody’s strong in the knowledge that we’ve got just a short distance of this section of the Rift Valley still to complete before getting to Addis Ababa and flying home for Christmas. There’s talk about family and friends, stuffed turkey, thick gravy and roast potatoes. We all agree that when we get home we’ll start with a Nando’s. Not that there’s anything wrong with hot and spicy Ethiopian food. We’ve learnt that thanks to the Italian occupation, spaghetti and meat is the best menu option, but none of us can get used to the local staple diet called injera, it’s a large pancake substance made from fermented tef – sour with a foam rubber texture. It’s served with a variety of sauces called wat, the hottest being the evil pepper filled red coloured kai wat which together with the Tej honey-wine, brings on ring-sting and smoke from the ears. Fortunately the fresh crusty bread dabo is good, as is Ethiopian coffee. Just 14 hours to go – a race against time to get to Addis Ababa.

As always it’s South African to the rescue. Greig Jansen who heads up Coca-Cola in Ethiopia gives us a safe place to leave the three expedition Landies and kit. There’s hot showers all round and a dinner party with his colourful team before racing to the airport for the Kenya Airways flight to take us home for Christmas.
Thanks to the Zen of Travel, a great expedition team and wonderful support from friends and sponsor partners, we’ve survived chapter one as we zigzagged across the sometimes dangerous Afar Triangle section of the Great African Rift Valley from Djibouti on the Horn of Africa to Addis Ababa the capital of Ethiopia. Continuing to use the adventure to improve lives, chapter two of the expedition will start in mid-January 2012 and will take us South from Addis Ababa along the Ethiopian Rift Valley lakes all the way to Lake Turkana, the world’s largest desert lake, in Northern Kenya. As they say in the Ethiopian Amharic language, ‘Ameseghinalehu’ which means thanks. We could not have succeeded without your support.

Note: Malaria kills nearly a million people a year in Africa. Most of these are women and children. You can make a difference by purchasing a UAM bracelet from any Cape Union Mart store. Add a few to your Christmas parcel and join the winning team to fight malaria.

Have a great festive season – Life’s a great adventure, isn’t it?

We welcome in 2012 by preparing to set off on the 2nd Chapter of our world first Nikon supported geographic and humanitarian Great African Rift Valley Expedition to complete the Rift from Djibouti on the Horn of Africa to Gorongosa in Mozambique.

Behind us now is Chapter 1 with the colourful expedition send-off from the Johannesburg International Motor Show, the shipping of the expedition Land Rovers and kit around the dangerous Horn of Africa; The successful United Against Malaria event at the Nelson Mandela College in Djibouti at which we handed over a message from Andile Mandela (Madiba’s grandson); Making it to the Gulf of Tadjora on the Red Sea for the geographic start point of the expedition, following Seven Summiter Mike Nixon as he mountain biked across the salt flats of Lake Assal, lowest land point in Africa deep in the heart of Afar Triangle where the dagger-carrying, gun toting Afar warriors once had the unpleasant habit of lopping off the testicles of intruders like ourselves. Behind us now are the mountainous Land Rover testing camel tracks and the journey to the crocodile filled lake that forms the mouth of the Awash River and the Afar smuggling route between Ethiopia and Djibouti. We’ve reached ‘Deset’, the lowest island on earth and on foot through the night with a camel to carry the drinking water and men armed with AK47’s for protection we made it to the rim of the lava spewing active volcano of Erta Ale.

In the Nikon branded Landies we bounced and boulder hopped over solidified lava flows and moonscapes and with tyres down to one bar, crossed the Danakil Desert, got hopelessly lost, but eventually made it to the multi-hued sulphurous wonderland of Dallol near the Eritrean border, in where we followed Mike Nixon on his mountain bike as he battled a headwind across the glaring white geyser spewing salt lake of the Danakil Depression, known as the hottest place on earth. From below sea level we followed the ancient camel track passing hundreds of camels loaded with tablets of trade salt bound for the 2000 metre high Rift Valley escarpment markets.

Dressed in beanies and jackets we zigzagged the overloaded expedition Land Rovers through the hills of Maychew, and then we dashed through the lands of the Nilotic Oromo people to the ancient walled city of Harar where we watched in amazement as Abbas the Hyena Man feeds these carnivores pieces of rotten camel meat from the end of a short stick held between his teeth. He asked us to participate – Bloody scary!.

Thanks to the Zen of Travel, a great expedition team and wonderful support from friends, Nikon and other sponsor partners, we’ve survived chapter one as we crisscrossed across the sometimes dangerous Afar Triangle section of the Great African Rift Valley from Djibouti on the Horn of Africa to Addis Ababa the capital of Ethiopia.

Throughout the journey we continued to distribute life saving PermaNets to pregnant mothers and mums with children under 5, LifeStraws for safe drinking water and Nikon Rite to Sight spectacles to the poor sighted.

Chapter 1 – Mission accomplished. Ahead of the Nikon supported Great African Rift Valley expedition lies Chapter 2 – it’s longer and equally unpredictable and challenging: a journey to connect the fascinating Rift Valley lakes and nomadic tribes of Southern Ethiopia all the way South to the inland Jade Sea of Turkana, considered the world’s largest desert lake. Still 9 chapters to go – we’ll keep you posted.

Whilst setting up our Chapter 2 Rift Valley logistics with our Ethiopian contacts it’s important to note what calendar we are working to. You see, Ethiopia celebrated its New Year on the 11th September, they still work to the old Julian calendar so are 7 years behind us and have 13 months to the year. But hey! Ethiopia time can be equally confusing. Like the Swahili of neighbouring Kenya and Tanzania, Ethiopians measure time in 12 hour cycles starting at 06:00 and 18:00. In other words, their seven o’clock is our one o’clock, and visa versa.

Anyway, we all know that whilst the Swiss might have developed the clock, it’s good old Mama Afrika that owns the time and that the secret to the success of the journey is to travel at the rhythm and pace of Africa and to celebrate every sunset with a battered enamel mug of the ‘Captain’s Best!’ – We’ll keep you posted.

Preparing for the next chapter of the Ethiopian leg of the Great African Rift Valley Expedition and the expedition members are getting this print out to help them communicate with the locals in Amharic, the national language of Ethiopia. It belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language family which includes Arabic, Hebrew and Assyrian. Although other languages are spoken in Ethiopia, Amharic is the most widely used and understood.

An informal ‘hello’ is tadiyass. ‘How are you?’ is dehna neh for a man and dehna nesh for a woman; to answer ‘I am fine’ you say dehna. ‘See you’ is chow, ‘yes’ is awo and O.K. is e’shi.

When it comes to food, breakfast is kurs, lunch is me’sa and dinner is e’rat. It you want bread, ask for dabbo, water is wuhu, tea is shai, and if you’re interested in famous Ethiopian coffee, ask for buna.

If you only remember one word, use e’shi, say it with a smile – it’ll get you through and break the ice – Chow – we’ll keep you posted!

Greetings from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where we are united with our three expedition Landies and kit – everything safe and sound thanks to ex-Kearsney boy, South African Greig Jansen and his team who run the Coca-Cola Sabco operation in East Africa. Like most fellow South Africans we meet in Africa, they are superbly helpful and even assist us with the humanitarian work attached to the expedition.
Addis is a fascinating place where high rise buildings, shiny new vehicles and businessmen in suites with mobile phones clamped to their ears share the city space with a parade of cripples, pick-pocketers, con-artists, amputee war veterans, street children and naked beggars. The place grows on you, despite the occasional opportunistic con-artist and the occasional rude teenager who gratuitously yells ‘f-off’ at faranji’s (travellers). The vast majority of the Ethiopians we meet are superbly friendly and despite the recent attack on travellers in the Danakil area of the Rift Valley, one feels safer here than downtown Kinshasa or Joburg. Ethiopia is a must on any traveller’s calendar.

Still in Addis Ababa, before the expedition heads off again for the Rift Valley, we meet up with Nando’s founder Robbie Brozin and a support team of adventurers who have just got back from the ancient Timket ceremony in Lalibela. Their scribe Paul Appleton adds these interesting scribbles to the expedition log…

Wede Ethiopia enquwan dehna metachiu! (that’s welcome to Ethiopia in Amharic).
As we landed in Gondar, the early morning mist was slowly losing its grasp on the land – there was a chill in the air and huge excitement in our group – and we weren’t quite sure what to expect.
Ethiopia is a deeply spiritual land. A country where people of many faiths live peacefully, side-by-side, and home of important holy sites in Islam, Judaism and Christianity. We could feel this spiritual energy at almost every point in our journey – especially as our time in the country coincided with the main annual Ethiopian Orthodox Christian celebration, Timket (Epiphany). To read more about their fascinating journey go to the Great African Rift Valley ‘Adventure Diary’ in www.kingsleyholgate.net

A note from Ross Holgate’s adventure diary:

Chapter 2 of the expedition and it’s great to be on the move again, the three expedition Landies – two Discovery 4’s and the big Landy Defender 130 mothership. Driving on the right hand side of the road, dodging trucks, pedestrians and livestock – the Landies loaded up with life saving mosquito nets for distribution to mums with children under the age of five, Nikon Rite to Sight spectacles for the poor sighted and LifeStraws for safe drinking water. We drop down the escarpment into Africa’s Great Rift Valley – that great tear in the earth’s crust that extends from the Danakil Plains of Ethiopia on the Red Sea to below Gorongosa in Mozambique. We’ve got two new expedition volunteers: cheerful KZN boy Brad Hansen who runs his own safari company in Tanzania has flown in to assist with the humanitarian work, and American photo-journalist Mark Lakin who’s going to document Chapter 2 of our Rift Valley odyssey.
Our first destination is Lake Ziway. It has five islands which include Debre Sina, Galila, Bird Island and Tullu Gudo, home to a monastery said to have housed the Ark of the Covenant around the ninth century. Ziway, known for its birds and hippos, is one of the eight Ethiopian Rift Valley lakes that stretch like a necklace of jewels from below Addis Ababa to the border with Kenya. As is the tradition on this expedition, we will continue to add iconic sipfills of Rift Valley water to the symbolic calabash.
As always there’s that wonderful feeling, the excitement of the unknown. This Southern part of Ethiopia leading down into the Omo Valley and Lake Turkana can be wild and unpredictable – We’ll keep you posted…