In a country that is almost all desert, lava and salt, Day Forest is a green surprise: a dense, cool, shady forest of junipers and wild olives perched at around 1,500 metres in the Goda Mountains. Climbing from the scorching heat of the coast to this wooded oasis, where you sometimes need a jacket at night, is one of the most astonishing contrasts in Djibouti. It is a National Park and one of the country's last dense forests.
The Forêt du Day is also a biodiversity treasure: it is home to the Djibouti francolin, a critically endangered endemic bird with barely a few hundred individuals left that hardly exists anywhere else in the world, along with other rare species. The African junipers, some of them very large, create a landscape that feels like another continent, a remnant of wetter times holding out in the highlands of the Horn of Africa.
This guide explains how to get to Day Forest from Tadjoura, how to explore it, where to stay in the mountain camps and why this fragile oasis, threatened by drought, is so special. For travellers who want to see the green, cool side of Djibouti, and for bird and trekking lovers, the Goda Mountains and their forest are a unique experience.
Day Forest is a relict: a remnant of the forests that covered much of the Horn of Africa in wetter periods and that, as the climate became drier, were left isolated on cool summits such as the Goda Mountains. This forest of African juniper and olive, a refuge for endemic species like the Djibouti francolin, has for centuries been part of the territory of Afar herders. Declared a National Park to protect it, today it is fighting to survive drought and degradation. Its natural history is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓On the northern shore of the gulf, the 'white city' of Tadjoura holds a thousand years of Islamic history, and behind it rise the cool Goda Mountains with the country's last forest.
Read the history of The Gulf of Tadjoura and the Goda Mountains →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Day Forest is, above all, a survivor. It is what scientists call a relict forest: a remnant of the woodlands that, in wetter times, covered large parts of the Horn of Africa. When the region's climate grew drier and hotter thousands of years ago, those forests disappeared from the plains and survived only on the cool, slightly wetter mountain tops, such as the Goda Mountains, where altitude creates a microclimate quite different from the surrounding desert.
Above 1,200 metres, mist and occasional rain support a forest of African juniper (Juniperus procera) and wild olive, with trees that can grow taller than 15-20 metres. It is a mountain ecosystem that looks as if it had been transplanted from another continent, cut off like a green island in a sea of aridity. Being an isolated refuge is what makes it so unusual and so valuable.
Thousands of years of isolation also encouraged the evolution of its own species, which ended up trapped in this small mountain paradise. The best-known case is the Djibouti francolin, a bird found almost nowhere else in the world. Day Forest is a time capsule of biodiversity, living evidence of what the region looked like in wetter times.
For centuries, the Goda Mountains, with Day Forest at their heart, have been the land of the Afar, the pastoral, semi-nomadic people who live across much of northern Djibouti and the neighbouring regions of Ethiopia and Eritrea. Up here, where it is cooler and a little wetter than on the coast, the Afar built a life of herding, small terraced gardens and mountain villages such as Day, Randa and Bankoualé, making the most of the springs and the milder climate.
The forest and the land around it were part of that ancestral territory: a source of firewood, grazing for livestock and shade in a country where shade is a luxury. For a long time this age-old human presence lived alongside the forest, although over the centuries grazing and logging, along with the changing climate, were among the factors that gradually shrank it.
The villages of the Goda still keep this mountain Afar culture, which is different from that of the coast and the desert. Local people know the forest and its wildlife better than anyone, and many now work in tourism as guides and camp managers, which links protecting the forest to the wellbeing of the communities that have always lived around it.
Day Forest's exceptional value as a relict forest, with its biodiversity and endemic species, led the Djiboutian authorities to protect it as a National Park, the Parc National de la Forêt du Day. The aim was clear: to preserve one of the country's last dense forests and the almost exclusive habitat of highly threatened birds such as the Djibouti francolin, while also protecting a unique landscape and a tourism resource for the future.
The forest is also among the natural areas Djibouti considers most important to conserve and to put forward for possible international recognition. Its significance goes beyond the country's borders: it is a biodiversity hotspot in the Horn of Africa and a reference site for studying relict forests, endemic birds and adaptation to climate change.
Legal protection, however, has not been enough to stop the decline. Protecting the forest in practice takes resources, monitoring and, above all, the involvement of local communities, whose livelihoods partly depend on the very trees and pastures that need protecting. Striking that balance between conservation and development is the park's great challenge.
Day Forest's recent history is largely one of a growing threat. Over the past few decades, many of the oldest junipers have died where they stand, and the forest has shrunk and degraded at an alarming rate. Several causes are at work together: longer and more frequent droughts, rising temperatures linked to climate change, grazing by goats and cutting for firewood. On top of that, African juniper struggles to regenerate in these ever drier conditions.
The forest's decline directly endangers the species that depend on it, starting with the Djibouti francolin, listed as critically endangered, with a population of just a few hundred birds. The bird's fate is tied to the forest's: if the juniper disappears, so does its refuge, and with it a species found nowhere else on Earth. It is a dramatic example of how climate change threatens biodiversity in the planet's most fragile corners.
That is why conservation work focuses on halting the degradation, helping the forest regenerate and finding alternatives for local communities that ease the pressure on the trees. Responsible tourism, which gives the living forest economic value, is one of the tools for its survival. The fight to save Day Forest is also a race against time and against the climate.
Today, Day Forest is still Djibouti's great green oasis and one of its most special natural destinations. Despite its decline, it keeps pockets of dense juniper forest where the air is cool and damp, birds sing and the landscape feels like another world. For travellers coming up from the heat of the coast, it is a revelation: proof that this small desert country also hides green mountains and surprising nature.
The park and the Goda Mountains offer the best hiking in the country, with forest walks, the chance to spot the extremely rare Djibouti francolin and nights in the Afar camps at Day, Randa and Bankoualé. It is an experience unlike anything else in Djibouti, slower-paced and built around contact with the mountain communities, who are at once guides, hosts and guardians of the forest.
Visiting Day Forest is also a way to support its conservation: by giving economic value to the living forest and the species that live in it, responsible tourism helps it have a future. In a world where relict forests and endemic species are vanishing fast, this small juniper oasis high in the Horn of Africa is a treasure worth getting to know and protecting.
