No country for budget travellers

Luke Jerod Kummer

• Last Updated: November 21. 2009 12:22AM UAE / November 20. 2009 8:22PM GMT

Two women walk in the market of Djibouti. Pedro Ugarte / AFP Photo

I had been tempted to visit Djibouti when I noticed this autumn that flydubai opened up a low-cost new route to the eensy country on the Horn of Africa. I booked a return flight in October for US$242 (Dh890), including taxes, which was less than half of what I paid for a ticket to nearby Addis Ababa in Ethiopia about a year ago. Indeed, it is probably the cheapest route from the Emirates to Sub-Saharan Africa.

The problem I soon discover upon returning to the main city from a overland jaunt to Lac Abbe is that Djibouti is an incredibly expensive place to visit. The country is home to a large base of the French Foreign Legion as well as an American military base and contingents of Dutch, German and Japanese armed forces, among others. The disparity of wealth between these sojourning soldiers and the local population is astounding.

Street scenes in much of Djibouti look similar to other developing countries in the region – with people sleeping on the pavement, panhandlers, shanties on the city’s edge and litter all around. At the same time, the military personnel have ample disposable income to spend on piquant but pricey French restaurants and rowdy discos. The country sees few casual visitors, and so any sort of tourist activity will likely be partaken by foreign military during their leave, which creates vastly inflated prices.

For example, when I visited Addis Ababa I stayed in a very basic, somewhat grotty hotel for about $10 (Dh36.7). But when I enquire about such accommodation in Djibouti City I find the cheapest rooms available still cost more than $50 (Dh184). In the end, I choose Hotel France, which at $58 (Dh212) per night is practically equal in cost to a Parisian pension. Except that not since wartime has Paris offered hotels with bucket showers, a refrigerator that electrocutes anyone who touches it and a blood-stained double mattress thrown on top of the broken frame of a single bed so that in the middle of sleeping one might crash to the floor. Really, I don’t mind simplicity so long as I’m paying an appropriate price.

After my trip to Lac Abbe I plan to take the same car and driver that I have rented from Samex Cargo, a car parts supplier that recently forayed into tourism, north to the salt lake of Lac Assal, and then onward to the pleasant waterfront of Plage des Sable. But when I go to Samex’s offices on Saturday morning to pay the bill for the previous two days I am greeted with a sticker shock I haven’t seen since my last trip to New York. For two days the bill is $540 (Dh1,983). This does not include hotel, food or petrol. I show the manager the e-mail I received from one of his employees that set the price at $90 (Dh331) per night for driver, car and lodging. But, after some nifty calculations that factor in extra kilometres and so forth, the cost is many times more than what I expected. I cancel the rest of my trip for the day, with the honest excuse that none of the ATMs in the city are working and so I simply don’t have that kind of money. In fairness, what I paid would have been reasonable had the 4x4 that took me been filled to capacity with seven people and the bill shared by all. For a single traveller, however, the price is prohibitive.

Still early in the day, I taxi back to my room to wash up and regroup. When I twist the knob of the bathroom sink, however, only a few drips come out. Left, right, left, right – none of the options result in enough water to splash on my face and cool off. I break into my stash of bottled water and douse my head, and then, determined to make the most of my remaining time in the country, stroll out into the midday sun, past the whispering schoolchildren and tables of khat vendors.

Djiboutians like to refer to their country as the Dubai of Africa. I don’t see a lot of resemblance besides a $400 million (Dh1.47 billion) DP World project being constructed nearby. The European Quarter of the city has a Caribbean feel because of the many colonial-era two-storey balustraded gingerbread buildings adorned with French-language signs – so much so that it’s a little jarring to see the streets around them full of hijabi women. The main marketplace on the edge of the African Quarter looks like the ones I’ve seen in neighbouring Ethiopia – dark, damp, narrow and crowded passageways filled with the smell of spices, ripe fruit and so many flies that if you inhale you’ll swallow a mouthful.

When I return to my hotel in the evening I am surprised to find several inches of water pooling on the pavement even though it hasn’t rained. I arrive at my room and see water gushing from beneath the door, beyond which is a scene from the last hours of the Titanic with water cascading from the second-floor bathroom down the stairs. I thus discover that the hotel’s water does work, just not during the daytime. As such, one must take care that the tap is turned off or else be ready for plague-like wrath.

I step into the ankle-deep water before remembering the refrigerator is on a loose circuit and if I make a wrong move I’ll be boiled like a dumpling. I look for the watchman and prepare for him to issue some sort of outlandish demand for money – which really wouldn’t be that unreasonable considering I’ve nearly destroyed the hotel. When I drag him to the room he looks understandably vexed.

“Where are you from?” he says gruffly.

“USA. Where are you from?” I respond.

“Ethiopia,” he says.

From my 10 days in Ethiopia I suddenly remember a single phrase meaning “how are you?”

“Da na na?” I say, hopefully.

“Da na ni,” he responds in Amharic with a suddenly warm smile. Soon we begin chatting about his hometown of Axum, which I visited, all the while with water flooding around us. In the end, he doesn’t ask me for any money and says he’ll clean up the mess, by which he means that he will let it drain and dry.

I decide to make myself scarce for a couple hours and when I return I fall fast asleep beside an open balcony door with its newly created waterfront view.

So it goes in Djibouti, a small country outsized by its attractions – the world’s saltiest lake, a crater marking the beginning of the Great Rift Valley, island beaches, the surreal chimneys around Lac Abbe – that is short on tourist infrastructure. It’s too bad the high price tags here make it nearly impossible for a traveller on a tight budget to enjoy Djibouti’s marvels and quirks, alas, even with flydubai’s cheap airfare.

lkummer@thenational.ae