Djibouti and the Red Sea

We are often asked about the sailing conditions and pictures of a rough sea never look like anything so I have put this picture in of a ship passing nearby as it gives some perspective with the spray off its bow

Then we are asked if it is so bad why do we do it? Well this is one of the reasons!! This is Uligan Island at the North end of the Maldives archipelago

A week after leaving the Maldives we met with five other boats and sailed in convoy up the Gulf of Aden to Djibouti in radio silence and in close formation as protection against pirates. In Djibouti we made a tour in this cross-country vehicle

Djibouti is very primitive and once out of the port most of the people seem to be nomadic and we saw many goats with their goatherd.

The villages were very poor and houses are made from all sorts of materials, the sad thing being that there seems to be no facilities for dealing with rubbish, which blows about unchecked.

We are constantly looking at sighs and commenting “you would never see this in the UK”, but for sheer madness this takes the biscuit. The French foreign legion doing helicopter training! No harnesses, no safety net, just hang on for your life!!!

On the ground it is barren, dry and harsh. Goats and camels are the only animals that are able to survive and they get everywhere.

We were stopped for lunch in the middle of nowhere thinking there was nothing living out here when these camels arrived with their owner, who was pleased to have some bread and water and a few francs for having his picture taken, before setting off out into the desert again. His beard is stained quite orange from eating wild honey

We visited a salt lake that was 150 meters below sea level, and must have been the harshest environment to live in that we have ever visited, but even here we had only been stopped a few minutes before there was a crowd of young men trying to sell us salt crystals, and they live in a village half a mile from the lake

Djibouti was fascinating but we were glad to leave and start our journey up the Red Sea. We managed to make it about half way up before the wind went round to the North and we were forced to shelter in one of the ‘Marsas’ in Sudan

While we were there we went ashore and spoke to the drivers of the camel trains whom, for a few dollars and some cigarettes let us ride their charges for the essential pictures!

These are flooded valleys on the desert coast and they support almost no vegetation and are dry and windswept, but they are stunningly beautiful and gave us some welcome shelter for a few days before we moved on Northwards towards Egypt

As we sailed up the coast we landed our biggest fish ever, 5ft 6ins of Dog Tooth Tuna. It had lovely white meat which fed us and the other boats with us for several days not to mention lots of locals who were pleased to take some off us

With the dry atmosphere the sunrises and sunsets are often spectacular

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