Socotra, Part III

The next day we headed off for our hike to the cave. This particular cave is very famous within Socotra because of the stalagmites and stalactites and a 1200 year old communion cup …but we’ll get to that later.

Throughout the day we encountered much of the amazing flora and fauna that gave rise to Socotra’s nickname “the other Galapagos”. We saw bottle trees and dragon’s blood trees (one of which we're standing under in the photo below), flowering aloe plants and numerous others.

This little guy was crossing the path as we climbed the mountain. He was very cute until Sean picked him up. If you’ve never seen a chameleon hiss take our word for it that they look incredibly menacing for such a small lizard.

There were also several trees full of Egyptian Vultures who are jokingly referred to as Socotra’s waste management plan (being the only one they’ve got). They were everywhere on the island and very brazen.

Well, back to the mountain. The climb was punishing, under a blistering sun and very little shade. But we made it the cave's mouth in a high cliff, and our efforts were well rewarded. The view down to the coast was spectacular and the cave was enormous! With a fifty-foot ceiling and consistently one hundred feet from wall to wall, this gigantic cave wanders back through the earth forabout three kilometres from the cliff's face - no crawl spaces for us.

It was an hour hike in from the mouth and the only light was provided by our flashlights, with which we were constantly scanning under, above and around us because we didn’t want to miss one square millimeter of this incredible place. I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves. The first is a shot of Wugdi, our guide, standing on a hill inside the cave, backlit by the entrance (he's that little speck in the bottom right of the light).

And here's Nic rounding the first of many massive pillars, followed by a shot of three of us in the first section where daylight was still visible.

Deep in the cave and a long way from
the light of day (but not far from the light of a camera flash) we came upon a crystal-clear freshwater pool, from which we all drank; the water was pure and cold and tasted great.

Just 20 minutes beyond that we reached the cup. Legend connects it to an early and long-extinct Christian community on the island,

which had its beginning when an early Socotran king was healed by a travelling missionary. It was partly encased in limestone and minerals but very well preserved.

After taking an obscene number of pictures we decided to turn off all our lights. A darkness thick and profound surrounded us, so intense that it would probably be useless to attempt a description.

We made our way out, passing some old writing on the way (our guide told us it was 2000 years old, but we had our doubts – he also told us it was French). I had been struggling with sickness the whole day and so it was with relief that we spotted the car at the bottom.

For the next couple of days I fought with a parasite in my stomach that caused quite a ruckus, but feeling better we decided to venture to a remote village and take some camels for a spin. That and more in Socotra Part IV!

~Ruth

Interlude

All right, I just noticed in the comments on our October 6 post that my cousin Allison picked up on an interesting deficiency in our blog... she notes that the only time we've ever alluded to work was to talk about a coffee pot and paper airplanes. Now cousin Allison is an intelligent person (as are many of you) and she finds this very suspect (as have many of you). But just to assuage your doubts, we promise to post something about work - as soon as we're done talking about vacation;)

Cheers!

Socotra, Part II

We arrived at around 11 am and checked into the Hafej Hotel. Our rooms were far from fancy, but at $8 per person the price was right. We met with our contact here and banged out an itinerary for the week. After eating lunch with him and his crew we settled in and toured the capital city of Hadibo which took all of 10 minutes. Hadibo has one paved road (Main Street, of course), a small market and ummm....that's it.
When we left they'd run out of petrol and hadn't had propane to cook with since June. Everything is flown in and selection in the shops is VERY limited; it makes Mukalla's stores seem extensive, and that's a stretch. Anyway, we ate at a local restaurant that night where they had their menu painted on the wall. There were three pictures: a fish, a chicken, and a chunk of goat. But we came for the sights not the food.,and Tuesday we sure got our fill! We were driven down the coast where we went swimming in a very remote cove. There were two dead sharks and a dead seagull on shore so at first we were a little wary of this beach of death tbut as soon as we entered the water all doubts left our minds.
The water was the clearest I've ever seen. We could see fish swimming around our feet and even in the tops of the waves that came crashing in on us.
After enjoying the crystal waters of the Indian Ocean we relaxed on the white sand beach until a fishing boat came in to picked us up to go fishing. Climbing into the boat was tricky as the water was so rough, I was one of the last to get in and gave Sean quite a scare because I got knocked over by a wave and disappeared from view for a few seconds, but eventually I made it in safely and we were under way toward calmer water.
Unfortunately, Tanya got seasick and had quite a hard time out there. She did manage to catch a fish however, as did Nic, Sean and myself. At first I thought I might have snagged a small shark (a few were seen off the bow a few minutes earlier); it wasn't (thankfully) but we don't have a clue what it was! We're accepting guesses by the way. The guides thought it was pretty funny that I almost dropped my catch out of fear when I first hauled it into the boat.
We returned to shore where Tanya was more comfortable and rested on a coral-strewn beach while the fish were divied up. We took Nic's and my fish to fry that night over our campfire and continued down the coast. We made it all the way to the southern tip and passed villages along the way filled with laughing children who were excited to see "ferenghi" (socotri word for foreigner).

This is an example of an older Socotri house that would've probably been used during the summer. In the summertime they experience 90 km/hr winds day and night. The locals suffer through this period in their regular houses or they move to caves where the shelter is better. Definitely not tourist season.

That night we lounged around a campfire next to a huge sand dune (see earlier mention of wind) in a small green area. Socotra is definitely greener than mainland Yemen and they get rain here more frequently. You can see a little bit of the mist covering the mountain - it will remain there for the next six weeks. There was a beautiful spring running through that supplies all the nearby villages. We ate our fried fish and enjoyed the babbling stream behind us and the crashing waves in front.















Paradise.

Socotra, Part I

So Monday morning, October 16th, off we went on Yemenia flight 861 from Mukalla to the remote Inidan Ocean Island of Socotra. On Yemenia flights you have to go to great lengths to find a reliable flight attendant; we, for instance, made our own. Always there when we needed him:)

More to come...

All This and Turtles, Too

Perhaps we should explain why we have vacation a month and a half after summer. The following two weeks are the end of Ramadan and the beginning of Eid (another festival). So everything pretty much shuts down until November.
Anyway, it is now 3 days until we leave for Socotra. This weekend, being free, we had planned to take a bus to Aden (as we've not yet been there, you see). Aden is a former British protectorate in the west of Yemen, and due to the outside influence is remarkably different than, say, Mukalla, a city which was happy to welcome no outsiders for... ever. But now we're here. The road to Aden goes through Shabwa Province, though, and that's a bit of a kidnapping hotspot. As there's recently been a rash of foreigner-napping, the police wouldn't let us through the first checkpoint. Then we decided to go to Sana'a. About the same time that we were booking bus tickets in the travel office, some villagers were busy kidnapping more tourists on that road. *sigh*. So we abandoned all of that, borrowed Nick's truck and headed east instead - back to the colony of green sea turtles, which you will have read about in another post if you were around for Season One of Yemeni Cricket.
This was our third visit, and the best one by far. Saw about 75 babies and 15 adults, four of which we got to watch lay their eggs (they lay close to 100 eggs each). Eat your heart out, Discovery Channel. And the icing on the cake - we arrived around 1:00 in the afternoon and stayed until 9:00 this morning, and had the entire beach to ourselves the whole time. It was marvellous.



















A few times we stumbled on nests in the act of hatching - these little fellas came bubbling out of the sand like water.




























































































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Search for Solitude

hermit

• noun

1 a person living in solitude as a religious discipline.

2 a reclusive or solitary person.

— DERIVATIVES hermitic adjective.

— ORIGIN Greek eremites, from eremos ‘solitary’.

Where there’s smoke…..

Apple butter. Apple butter is a very tasty jam-like substance that's great on cornbread. The recipe I’ve used before was for a slow cooker, but I decided to alter it a little bit to use the oven instead. Well, all was going smoothly (and smelling heavenly) so we decided to watch a movie to pass the time. We hadn’t gotten too far when I thought I smelled smoke. We dashed to the hall and had to fight our way through a thick, acrid cloud . The apple butter was reduced to a dark, apple caramel/glue. Apparently, when you cook, you’re supposed to check the progress once in a while. Hmmmm.

Well, needless to say it’s ruined but we had a pretty good laugh about it – now to clean the oven!



(Tanya and Sean thought it might make a good ice cream topping. That theory didn’t last too long).

Split Rock

These are a couple friends of ours; they teach English at a local school. A few days ago we took a drive with them down to Split Rock
(seen in the background), a formation which has a couple of different explanations. One is that a prophet struck the rock with his staff and it split in two. Translated into Canadian-speak.......Glooscap did it. The second: workers cut through to make the road (the water used to be a lot higher before they constructed the breakwater).


So, we all spent the afternoon there and had a great time exploring the beach, tidal pools, an abandoned restaurant project and watching a couple of guys fishing. The tidal pools revealed sea cucumbers, baby lobsters and giant barnacles.

These fishermen... one was tossing chum into the water while the other was throwing out his line and brining it in/ keeping it organized by wrapping it around his neck and torso. Does this sound unsafe to anyone else out there???















As we were leaving we noticed another fisherman on the beach who caught this interesting toothed specimen. Sean quickly bought one to cook up for dinner but found to his chagrin that its scales were made of steel. He could barely cut through it, but once fileted it made a nice meal.







Not a bad way to spend an afternoon, eh? It hasn't snowed in NB yet has it? *Insert evil laugh here*

Two blind mice

Some of you may remember Yemeni Cricket's first pets - Isaac and Blewett. This dynamic duo provided endless entertainment.




They were quiet - as churchmice you could say. Their favourite activities included eating, sleeping, stuffing their bedroom full of wood chips and running through toilet paper rolls. Yes, they were intellectuals. Isaac died peacefully in his sleep. Blewett was taken to live with a classfull of elementary children where he probably died of an anxiety attack. Ah well, you win some, you lose some. Above is a shot of Blewett (or Isaac) looking especially adorable. What is the point of this ramble you ask...well, today we visited the oasis again and Sean and I spotted a couple of mice tumbling out of a tree.

They were very groggy, with their eyes half closed and unsteady on their feet. Do mother mice kick their babies out of the nest?

Anyway, we had to go over and see how they were doing and we managed to get some great shots in the process. We really wanted to take them home (because their chances of survival were not looking good) but we are going to Soqotra for vacation on the 16th! Woohoo! So, they wouldn't be any better off. Sigh. We wish you well little mice - wherever you are.

*Dedicated to Isaac and Blewett - We hope you scampered towards the light.

Suq Samak

Stopped by the fish market the other day. It's something we hadn't done in all our time here, but always meant to. The place is massive; the boats just keep coming and coming, unlaoding their catches and then leaving again. Quite an operation. You can find anything here: baby shark, mama shark, tuna, lobster, octopus, along with dozens of varieties of fish unknown to the Cricket. Ruth bought some fresh tuna (cheap!) and I picked up a couple Arabian Sea lobsters, which are slightly different creatures than the ones we're used to in the North Atlantic, but tasty nonetheless.





























































































































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