The Earth's outer shell is made up of giant pieces called tectonic plates, and most of the time they move so slowly you cannot feel it at all – just a few centimetres a year, roughly as fast as your fingernails grow. But in Djibouti, three plates are pulling apart from each other, and the gap between them – called a rift – is slowly getting wider every year.
Ardoukoba sits right in this rift zone. When it erupted in 1978, molten rock poured out and flowed across the landscape, cooling into the rough black lava fields you can still see today. Walking on the lava feels like walking on a giant sponge made of stone – full of holes and bubbles where gases escaped as the rock cooled.
Around Ardoukoba, you can also find hot springs – places where water heated by underground rocks bubbles up to the surface. These springs are sometimes colourful because of the minerals dissolved in them, and they smell of rotten eggs because of sulphur – a gas that comes from deep inside the Earth.
Djibouti's landscape is actually what the bottom of a future ocean might look like. Over millions of years, as the rift gets wider, the land here is expected to sink and fill with sea water, extending the Red Sea. Scientists come from all over the world to study this rare and remarkable place.