Day 5
Day 6: Hajhir Mountains
We spent all previous nights on the beach where it was warm. I was already used to sleep in my tent covered only by the sheet. This time we were at a high elevation. The campsite was a beautiful place. We watched the sunset sitting at our tents’ entrances and it was a million-dollar view. It became cold in the mountains after the sunset. I put on several layers of clothes, practically everything that was in my backpack, shivered through the night anyway and did not get much sleep.
After breakfast, we set off for another drive on a very bad steep and uneven road. The group noticed that our leader, Damir, was always vague about the time to our destination. His usual response was ‘it takes about 1 hour to get there’ while the actual travel time varied a lot. So, the group introduced a new time unit, the damir, that could be anything between 1 and 2.5 hours.
There was a small stream in the canyon. We decided to refresh in its water after the hike on a hot day, but it was not the same as in Kalysan Canyon. The stream was too shallow to swim in it, full of suspiciously looking water beetles. We sat in the water long enough to cool down, then drove up to the opposite rim of the canyon and stopped for lunch under dragon trees. Our excellent team cooked for us a good meal. Egyptian vultures, big birds that are everywhere on Socotra, were around us ready to pick up any food that we discarded.
The car batteries were used for everything from powering Starlink to charging our cellphones. No wonder that they kept dying in one car or another. It was interesting how our drivers solved this problem. Instead of connecting the dead battery with a cable to jump-start it, they brought a good battery and held it close so both batteries touch, and it worked!
We got to our next campsite with plenty of time before dinner, so we could enjoy a good long dip in the sea. It was our last night in the tents. By then, everyone got accustomed to sleep on the ground breathing unpolluted Socotra air during the night. It felt pretty normal but on the following day we were going back to civilization. Our last night before the flight to Abu Dhabi will be in the hotel.
Day 7