Lake Assal

This is us (minus Anj) floating in Lake Assal in Djibouti. This is apparently the second saltiest water body in the world. Saltier than the Dead Sea. (The saltiest is in Antartica.) It is fed, we were told, by underground Rivers from the Bay of Goubet, and the water gets saltier through evaporation. You can see the salt ring on the far side. It was cool. We bobbed like corks.

Nothing lives in the lake, apparently, although somehow fish survive in the very short hot spring fed stream which also flows into the lake. The bottom of the lake is solid salt. Nomads come here and to other salty spots in the area to harvest the salt, which they later sell. We were so salty when we got out, that salt crystals formed on our skin almost immediately. We then went for a dip in the sea to rinse the salt off!

The name of the lake, Assal, apparently has nothing to do with salt. It means "honey".