Exploring the Enchanting Elements of Attraction of Socotra Island

Socotra Island enjoys a great interest by the government to take advantage of its natural characteristics, economic features and tourism attraction elements, which come within the same advantage framework as a museum of natural history that gets advantage of the global attention and efforts to preserve this island as a natural jewel, in addition to the concern it enjoys by UNESCO and international environment preservation organizations, and this concern constitutes in two sections of which the first is devoted in the development programs to preserve the island’s nature, and nominating Socotra as nature reserve that enjoys a regional and global concern to serve humanity, while the second is devoted in biodiversity protection project in the island and its archipelago.

If we have a look at the elements of attraction, we find that they are constituted in five parts; the first is Flora, Of Socotra’s 825 plant species 307 (37%) are endemic including Aloe perryi.  .The second is the endemic and migrant birds, which constitute one of natural features of the island, where 105 species of birds are registered, 30 of them breed on this island that contains a high percentage of endemic birds.

The third tourism attraction element is the caves and grottos that spread in several locations of the island of Socotra and its affiliated islands. These caves were formed by natural erosion and in some of them water worked to dissolve the limestone and formed hanging pillars from the ceilings of the caves, in addition to the normal limestone pillars rising from the caves bottoms to top, and most of those caves are inhabited.  Among those caves, the most important is “de Jub” grotto in Nujad plain, which is the largest in size, where car can carry visitors to the cavity of the grotto moving in and out with no trouble, and this grotto is located in a distance of 57 km far from Hedibo center. There is also the cave of Huq in Hala area at the east of Socotra Island with diameter of about 15 meters and a height of 8 meters, while its length is estimated about 500 to 1000 meters.

There are also the amazing beaches that extended on a distance of 300 miles and mostly shaded by palm trees, while their waters contain rare turtles such as large green turtles, in addition to the famous corals and pearls. Also there are waterfalls that spread in different locations of the island, of which the most important is “Danjhen” falls in Hedibo on a distance of 6 km away from the center, as well as the falls of Disbroh in Qa’arah ,and Ayhaft  and most of these waterfalls originate from the mountains throughout the year.