Have you ever had one of those dreams where you were trapped in a Salvador Dali painting or lost in space on an alien planet? I bet you woke up with a mild sweat, or for those brave ‘dreamanaughts’ out there, you may have awakened with a piece of nostalgia wishing you could be there again…
Well your wish or your worst nightmare has come true…
Welcome to Socotra Island, Yemen, where you will find dragons blood, elephant leg desert roses, flying saucer trees, bucha triffids, and cucumber trees.
Approximately 200 nautical miles off the coast of Yemen, and roughly 130 off the coast of Somalia, like a lilliputian, gleaming tooth in the yawing mouth of the Gulf of Aden, floats the fabled island of Socotra (Island of Bliss in Sanscrit), one of the most peculiar, isolated places on earth. It’s also among the most challenging to get to with two yearly monsoons (June-October and April-May), no natural harbor and a booming offshore piracy business. The climate is brutal, hot and parched, with broad sandy beaches that climb up to limestone tablelands brimming with caves and mountains upward of 1500 meters in height.
It has been titled the Galapagos Islands of the Indian Ocean, and one of The Most Alien Landscapes on Earth. Something like a cross between a Dr Seuss book and the mind of Salvador Dali, Socotra Islands unearthly alien flora deconstructs any notion about what is regarded as “normal” for a landscape on Earth. It’s a place you have to see to believe. If you were marooned here or cast onto the island as part of a practical joke you wouldn’t be alone in thinking that you had been abducted by aliens or taken back in time to the Jurassic period.
Now classified as an International Biosphere Reserve, the island has been geographically insulated from mainland Africa for the past 6 or 7 million years. It is abundant with 700 exceedingly rare species of plant life (of which a third are found nowhere else on Earth–some up to 20 million years old) 140 species of birds and countless additional weird and extraordinary creatures.
Socotra Island is also a location drenched in myths and legends and the ancient source of frankincense, myrrh, ambergris, and dragon’s blood. Apparently Thomas the Apostle was alleged to have been shipwrecked here (first century AD), Sinbad the sailor (The Arabian Nights) is said to have been attacked by mythical birds of prey spawned from the island, and Marco Polo was charmed to the island by corsairs who in his own words were “the most skilful enchanters in the world”
There are about 40,000 inhabitants (blond people who are apparently descendants of Alexander the Great), but because the island is a UNESCO, World Natural Heritage Site, there are no beach-side hotels as it is geared towards eco-tourism and nurturing the local economy and way of life. For diving enthusiasts, there is an unequaled aquatic landscape of submerged vessels ready to be explored.
For more information take a look at the www.socotraislandadventure.com website and prepare to be amazed!
By Cedric Jean
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