Hotfooting it in Africa

The Hottest Place on Earth (Prime, Mondays 8.30pm)

Before you complain about your job, Nelson Mail TV reviewer Victoria Guild suggests you spare a thought for the workers at the Dallol salt mines in Ethiopia.

It's getting harder to find untouched places in this overdeveloped world, but parts of Africa are so inhospitable they continue on in much the same vein as they have for centuries.

Nowhere is this more evident than The Hottest Place on Earth (Monday nights on Prime).

A group of scientists and adventurers have descended on Ethiopia to discover how the Afar people and their animals survive the heat in the northern Danakil Desert, and to get up close to some of the area's volcanoes.

Just getting to their destination took some doing. The first day, it took eight hours to travel 60 kilometres, but that was when they had a vehicle. On foot as part of a camel train, it took three days to travel the same distance.

At camp on the first night, vet Steve Leonard (also the narrator) searched for scorpions with his ultraviolet torch. They showed up fluorescent green against the desert floor. He found a few close to camp, and even had one crawling on his hand. Apparently, they were out feasting on the crickets that come out at night, and in turn are eaten by rats, which are then consumed by snakes. At that point, I would have been opting to sleep in the truck rather than out under the stars.

The next day, the group began their walk under strict hydration instructions. Because they were walking in 35 degree Celsius-plus heat, they could be drinking water all day but still risking death from dehydration.

They were to be weighed at the start of each day, and had to keep their urine in a bottle so their water loss could be measured. Thank goodness their bottles were colour-coded.

Even the nights gave no respite. Unlike other deserts, where the temperature plummets when the sun goes down, the Danakil Desert stays at about 30C. At least when it's cold, you can put on a few extra layers or crank up a warm fire. In an all-pervading heat, the only cure is air conditioning, and you don't get a lot of that in the desert. One of the group described it as claustrophobic.

Camels are used to ferry supplies and salt from the mines, with up to 2000 a day walking the paths from mine to village and back again. They are able to walk up to 40km a day, and can go for seven days without a drink – mainly because they hardly sweat. Steve got all affectionate with one and called him Geoff.

But the heat and venomous critters weren't the only threats on this journey. As they walked through a valley on the second day, the group needed armed guards to protect them from bandits and rebels.

It was through this valley that the earth scientist Dougal Jerram pointed out some tilted sedimentary rocks with a crack through the middle, which at one stage would have been filled with magma. It was like looking at a slice of the earth's crust which perfectly demonstrated how layers of rocks are formed.

By the time the group got out of the valley, the temperature had climbed into the mid-40s. Lloyd the soundman began to struggle, and they still had 14km to go. The group had to finish the day's trek in the dark. The firewind that blows in from Arabia didn't make things any easier.

The next day, after their vehicles got stuck several times, the group arrived at the Dallol salt mines, where men were ripping blocks of salt out of the earth by hand. There's demarcation along religious lines. The Christian men from the villages carve out the big chunks of salt, then the Muslim men cut them into neat little 1kg blocks. In Ethiopia, it's quite a well-paid job – US$4 for a 12-hour shift. That's on top of a five-hour walk each day just to get there and back. And this is the hottest place on Earth, with an average temperature (day and night) of 34.4C.

After chatting at the mine with a man with the funkiest orange beard I've seen on TV for a long time, some of the group visited the site of a massive eruption in 1926. It's a spectacular place – a moonscape with bubbling ponds full of sulphuric acid which can cook an egg, despite being only 34C.

It then took the group 2 1/2 hours to travel just 5.6km. The temperature hit an unbearable 49.1C, and they were about to arrive in a village where, until the 1930s, any male entering the locals' territory was castrated and killed.

Luckily, dancing was more the order of the day for this lot, albeit with an AK47 slung over one shoulder. Now the group begin the real adventure of living and working with the Afar.

It's been an absorbing journey so far.

Watch a clip from The Hottest Place on Earth (Prime, Mondays 8.30pm)

- © Fairfax NZ News