Stay : Sea and mountains

Airport transfer to Africorne Travel accommodation

Africorne Travel will provide you with a comfortable, air-conditioned apartment where you can spend the night and where any breakfast you wish will be prepared for you. Of course, hotel accommodation can be booked if you prefer.

Morning: Riyadh market and visit to Arhiba with a local guide

Lunch in a restaurant

Afternoon: visit to Place du 27 juin (formerly Place Ménélik), Place Mahmoud Harbi (formerly Place Arthur Rimbaud), the "caisses", Rue des Mouches....

or visit the DECAN refuge, depending on the day and time of arrival in Djibouti. This is an animal park near Djibouti, where animals from the country and other parts of Africa have been taken in.

Evening meal in Djibouti

Night: Africorne Travel apartment

Morning: Departure by 4×4 vehicle for Ras Ali creek near Tadjourah

On the way, we stop at the Dimbiya canyon, nicknamed "the Grand Canyon"..

A few hundred meters further on, another stop at the stele of B. Borrel, the French magistrate whose charred body was found one morning in 1995 at the bottom of the cliff; the "Borrel affair" soured relations between the Djiboutian and French states for several years.

We then leave the road to take the "access ramp" to Lake Assal. Located 153 metres below sea level, Lake Assal is one of the saltiest lakes in the world (over 300 grams of salt per liter of water). This fact, combined with the high evaporation rate due to the intense heat, explains why salt has been mined here for hundreds of years. We'll be able to bathe here, as we're taking on board the fresh water needed for showering after the bath; plastic shoes are required to avoid injuring ourselves on the sharp salt crystals.

Lunch: picnic at Le Goubet. We'll picnic in the shade of a hard stand near the shark pit where Captain Cousteau lowered an iron cage (another rumor...)

Afternoon: continuation of the journey to Ras Ali, with its superb scenery.

Evening meal and overnight at Ras Ali camp

Morning: Swimming, snorkeling, kayaking on Ras Ali beach

The underwater flora and fauna here are of exceptional variety and beauty. The camp is equipped with kayaks, which you can use to go as far as a recent mangrove swamp.

Lunch at Ras Ali camp

Afternoon: Departure for Bankoualé camp

The Bankoualé camp is set in a green hillside setting. It's a charming, pleasantly cool place, renowned for the gardens that line the wadi. A tiny village of a few houses lies opposite the camp on the other side of the wadi.

Evening meal and overnight at the Bankoualé camp

Morning: excursion to the Bankoualé gardens along the wadi. Visit the village of Ardo, its school and craft cooperative, before taking the road back to Djibouti.

On the way,we'll take a walk on the lava field between Lake Assal and Goubet, where we'll observe a few meters of the rift fault, which at this point is only a few centimetres wide.

Lunch in Bankoualé

Evening meal at a restaurant in Djibouti

Night in Africorne Travel apartment

Morning: journey from Djibouti to Dikhil on a 120 km asphalt road; this is the route taken by Ethiopian truckers from the port of Djibouti to Addis Ababa, to import the goods needed for the country's economy.

We cross the semi-desert expanses of Petit Bara and Grand Bara, where we observe mirages and whirlpools.

Lunch in a restaurant in Dikhil

Afternoon: after Dikhil, we leave the road to cover 80 km of sometimes sandy tracks. We'll pass through the villages of As Eyla and Koutabouya. On these tracks we'll spot Pelzen's gazelles and, at the end of the route, warthogs.

On the border between Ethiopia and Djibouti, Lake Abbé offers a unique panorama. Its limestone chimneys offer a lunar landscape, much sought-after by photographers from all over the world, particularly at sunrise and sunset.

The sulphurous scents wafting from the numerous fumaroles have given the lake its name. Indeed, Abbé means "rotten"!

Arrive at the Abbé Lake camp in the evening to watch the sunset

Night and meal at Lac Abbé camp

Morning: early in the morning, we'll watch the sunrise over the chimneys. Then we'll get up close to the pink flamingos on the lakeshore. We'll also see some boiling water springs.

Then we'll take the road to Arta, where we'll have lunch. Arta is a charming locality, "perched" at an altitude of 600 metres, where Djibouti's notables have a second home to take advantage of its mild temperature, which is 4 or 5 degrees lower than in Djibouti.

Lunch at Sunny Hill, the country's hotel and catering school!

Afternoon: we descend a superb track to the pebble beach of Arta, a remarkable site for observing underwater flora and fauna.

From mid-November to the end of January: optional whale-shark excursion.

Arrival in Djibouti in the evening.

Evening meal: Restaurant in Djibouti

Overnight : Africorne Travel apartment

Snorkeling and lounging on this day's program

Lunch in a straw hut on the beach

Evening meal in a restaurant in Djibouti. Yemeni fish menu; the fish you choose is cut into two slices and placed in a circular oven....

Transfer to Djibouti airport in the evening.

Note: At Moucha it is possible to snorkel; the "snorkeling" option requires you to position the day on the island more than 24 hours before your return by plane. Please contact us for a tailor-made program.