Day Forest National Park

Djibouti runs hot, bare and volcanic - and then the Goda Mountains above Tadjoura climb past 1,700 metres into the Day Forest, a surviving island of East African juniper, wild olive, box and dragon trees that remembers a wetter Africa. The national park protects the country's only true woodland and its rarest resident, the Djibouti francolin, a partridge-like endemic found nowhere else on earth, sharing the shade with sunbirds, hornbills and troops of hamadryas baboons. Afar villages terrace the valleys below, and the temperature drop from the coast - often fifteen degrees - is itself worth the drive.

What you actually see

• The juniper stands - the ancient relic woodland on the ridges.
• The Djibouti francolin - the endemic bird, best sought at dawn.
• The Goda viewpoints - gorges and green terraces above the Gulf of Tadjoura.
• The cool air - the Horn's most improbable climate refuge.

When to go

November to March pairs the forest's cool with bearable coast temperatures for the journey; dawn and dusk are the birding hours. Summer makes the mountain a genuine refuge from the furnace below.

Honest expectations

The forest is small and stressed - decades of drought and grazing have thinned the junipers, and expecting a lush national park in the alpine sense misreads it; this is a precious remnant, moving precisely because of its fragility. Access roads are rough, facilities minimal, and local guides plus village fees are both required and the point - the communities are the forest's keepers.

Nearby

Tadjoura's whitewashed old town, the Gulf's whale-shark waters and the Grand Barra route south.