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HISTORY OF BIG SUR COAST

  A new dawn:              Locals had long called for a road along the coast to aid shipwreck victims and improve access to isolated communities.  Construction started in 1919, and 18 years, 32 tonnes of dynamite and 33 bridges later, the Big Sur stretch of California Highway One was complete.               The implausible route, with its myriad twists and turns and dramatic drop-offs, became an instant classic.  The author and painter Henry Miller fled to Big Sur in 1944 and stayed for nearly two decades.  Photographer Edward Weston and Beat Generation bard Jack Kerouac fell under its spell.  By the late 1960’s San Francisco’s counterculture revolution had swept down to Big Sur, and the likes of Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell performed on the cliff tops.              ...
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AFAR DEPRESSION

 

AFAR DEPRESSION:

Afar Depression


             Intense heat and volatile geology make this landscape the hottest in Africa in more ways than one.  Though extreme and inhospitable today, millions of years ago this was the cradle of humankind.

              The Afar, or Danakil, Depression in Ethiopia is the hottest place on Earth.  Even in winter, the daytime temperature in this scrubland desert can soar above 42C(108F); in summer it exceeds 50C (122F).  It is so dry and hot, and there is so little shade, that local people – mainly salt traders and nomadic herders – are often confined to their tents during the day.  It is a political as well as climatic tinderbox.  The Afar encompasses Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti.  War between Ethiopia and Eritrea combines with extreme physical hardships to make Afar almost uninhabitable.

                  Although the region is short on home comforts, it is a dynamic natural spectacle.  The Depression is part of the Great Rift Valley that runs from Syria south to Mozambique, and three great splits in the Earth’s thin outer crust meet at this point.  As the African and Arabian continental plates drift apart, molten magma oozes up through the gap, a process more usually seen at the bottom of the ocean.  All this geological activity produces a scorching cauldron of earthquakes, volcanoes and hydrothermal fields.  In 2005 powerful earthquakes and volcanic eruptions shook the region for three days.  Ash filled the air, rocks fell from the sky and the rift widened by a staggering 8m (26ft) in just ten days.  Although the people were evacuated, large numbers of camels and goats were killed, swallowed up by fissures in the ground or hit by volcanic bombs.  This geological unravelling, which began millions of years ago, will eventually lead to saltwater from the Red Sea flooding into the gash and forming a new sea.

Location: Afar, Ethiopia

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