Socotra, Yemen Part 3 - Aunt Anna and the Dragon's Blood

Guest writer: Anna Nilsson Spets

There are some parts of the world left untouched by major external influences, Socotra being one of them.

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The nights are pitch black with a starry sky straight out of an astronomy textbook. No street lights, neon or chance of internet, here you connect to nature.

Socotra Speciality Tours protects the environment, we all get a great water bottle, we have no disposables and rubbish is collected together.

Tourism, yes we do see other tourists, but only a handful. Around 5000 tourists are expected per year. However, the island struggles with a faltering infrastructure, garbage disposal being one of the problems.

Day 5: We start day 5 with breakfast de luxe and then a short hike to the Dagub cave.

The opening itself is wide and inside is a huge hall that makes me think of the King of the Mountains, but I don't see him.

However, I see small bats hanging out in the cave roof and some kind of swift flying in and out. The cave is damp and it drips from the walls and drips from above.

Bowls and dripstones formed by thousands of years of dripping, it takes my breath away.

Let's not talk about the view, or rather, it's miles away.

The daily bread will be bought today too. The shop seems to be the natural meeting place for young and old.

The Jeeps will be refuelled.

We head for a new destination, the Diksam plateau, we go up, up on roads that are barely passable. Our drivers drive professionally between log and stone.

Suddenly the driver sees a chameleon in a bush. It is a Chamaeleo monachus, Socotra Chameleon, which for the moment is grey-black.

Diksam is high, the air is much cooler and it will certainly be a cold night.

Firmihin Forest is the place where thousands of dragon's blood trees grow, like exclamation marks reaching for the sky, the dirt vultures have them as a lookout.

Dragon's blood trees are something of a signature of Socotra. The trees can grow up to 20 metres high, the branches are like a bunch of forks, they look strange. The leaves are narrow and sit at the top, the bark is silvery. The trees are around 500 years or older.

Why are they called dragon's blood trees? Well, if you scratch the trunk, a red liquid, the dragon's blood, oozes out. When this solidifies, it forms a kind of resin that is collected and used in many different ways.

Dragon's blood is said to have magical powers in folk medicine and alchemy, used to stop bleeding after childbirth, for example. It is also widely used in handicrafts as it gives a very strong red colour.

Dracaena cinnabari, like several other trees, is endemic, other species of dragon's blood trees are found in Tenerife.

The night was ... freezing.

Some campervans have toilets, European or pit toilets. If there were none, portable ones were set up.

Day 6: We make a stop in a small village and visit a family that grows dragon blood trees and some other things.

For me, working with plants, it is of course interesting, but unfortunately the export of seeds and plant material is subject to very high fines.

The woman shows me her handmade pottery, a kind of smoking pipe and a censer. I buy a bag of ground dragon's blood resin and some resin from the frankincense tree.

We are offered sour goat's milk. Camel milk is also drunk.

Boswellia sacra, Frankincense tree/Olibanum is a very special tree where the resin is used, which when burned gives off a pleasant odour, like a kind of incense. To collect the resin, cut the trunk, wait until the resin has hardened and scrape it off.

Frankincense is mentioned in the Bible, the three wise men brought gifts to the child in the manger, it was gold, myrrh and Frankincense/olibanum.

A crash course on how to greet Socotra is given by our top guide Abdullah and driver Issah.

Along the coast we get the chance to crawl into a Soviet tank, traces of the Cold War, I refrain.

Detwah lagoon, this is where I wonder if I have arrived in paradise ... There is something about islands that give me peace of mind, the turquoise sea with coral reefs, playing dolphins and a wide variety of species.

An evening on a mountain top ends the day.

Evening meal in the light of fairy lights.

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Anna Nilsson Spets

60+ year old lady with a lifelong love for Africa. Emigrated to Flanders in Belgium and works with plants on a daily basis. Writes, takes photos and tries to inspire others to budget travel on their own. Blogs on "Anna's mix" about travelling, work, plants, writing and much more.

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