I woke up the next morning at 5am to a lazy sunrise over the beach.
After a perfunctory breakfast, about half the group set off for the steep, rocky, and arduous 2 hour hike up to Hoq’s Cave.
This cave is one of the most important spots on the island and the closest you can get to visiting an alien planet.
It’s a long haul. Pack tons of water and don’t carry too much stuff!
Once you reach it, you earned the views: the cave is located near Saqra Village with its entrance overlooking the Arabian Sea.
Once inside and journeying over 1km into its belly, it feels like you’ve stumbled upon the very planet that inspired H.R. Giger’s Alien series.
There are even Alien eggs here!
We journeyed nearly 45 minutes to reach the very end allowed for visitors:
Afterwards we backtracked out and headed back downhill another 2 hours back to the village.
There we caught our rides back to the beach where we then had lunch, lazily bundled our tents, and drove down to the Dihamri Marine Protected Area where we were supposed to snorkel and join the local fishermen to catch some fish for dinner.
But alas, the tide was too strong here so we sulked our way back for our overnight stay at our hotel in Habido.
There we had the unfortunate news that despite being the only hotels in Socotra, neither does laundry. So for the first time ever, I resorted to DIY before heading to bed:
After pooped out from both yesterday’s sand dune stairmaster 9000 workout and the journey to Mars today, I passed out at 8:30pm for a much needed 10 hours catch-up sleep.
- At time of posting in Hoq Cave, it was 28 °C - Humidity: 16% | Wind Speed: 16km/hr | Cloud Cover: hot