Lake Assal (Bahr al Assal) in Djibouti is Africa’s lowest geographic point, it lies 515 feet (155m) below sea level. It’s a fascinating salt water lake, with beaches literally made of pure salt. Some of the salt banks are over 200 feet (65 m) deep. Lake Assal is saltier than the Dead Sea, you don’t have to swim a single stroke – you can just float and read a book. Salt cakes everything along the shores of this lake, loose vegetation that has been blown here from far away, dead birds — everything is crystallized in salt. And not surprisingly, no vegetation grows here. It’s a very bright and very hot place.

Lake Assal is considered the most saline body of water on earth outside Antarctica, with 34.8% percent salt concentration (up to 40% at 20 m (66 ft) depth), compared to Garabogazköl or the 33.7 percent level in the Dead Sea (often incorrectly considered the world’s most saline lake), and an average of 3.5 percent in the world’s oceans. Only some hypersaline lakes of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica such as Don Juan Pond and perhaps Lake Vanda (with a reported salinity of “10 times the salinity of sea water”) have a higher salinity. The sources of the lake are hot springs whose salinity is close to sea water, which are fed by the Gulf of Tadjoura, the eastern extension of the Gulf of Aden, specifically the nearly closed-off bay Ghoubet Kharab, about 10 km southeast of the lake.

The area is wild and desert-like, and no fauna or flora can be seen in the syrupy waters of the lake. The high temperature of the water (33-34 °C) favors evaporation, and it is surrounded by a salt pan (extending west and mainly northwest). The salt is mined and transported by caravan to Ethiopia.

You may have heard of the salt caravans that cross the Sahara, there are also salt caravans that travel from Lake Assal into the Ethiopian Highlands. The Afar, a nomadic tribe, have been cutting slabs of salt from this lake for centuries and continue to do so today. Only the top crust can be used and it takes skill as well as strength to cut correctly. Slabs are shaped into rectangles that weigh around 7kg and are hoisted onto the backs of camels. Each camel can carry twenty blocks of salt. Hundreds of camels and their owners make this trek every week.