Dragons Blood island

This article first appeared in Tracks Magazine in November 2004
Click HERE for photographs of this trip. (opens in a new window)
Photo's by Toby Adamson and Stuart Butler.

Heart beating fast and sweat pouring off me, I ran and stumbled across the rocky hillside, occasionally shooting a glance behind me to check on the progress of the frothing, horned beast chasing me,

“Look”, I yelled as I tripped over yet another thorny gorse bush, “You’re a goat, you stupid bastard. You’re supposed to be scared of me”. Several hundred metres away Brandon was, I imagine, engaged in a fairly similar kind of conversation,

“Look. You’re a fish you stupid bastard. You’re supposed to be scared of me”. Brandon’s problem however was that his fish was a couple of times the length of him and had teeth about the size of the average family car. Still, he’s South African. He’s used to this kind of thing.

You need a good map to find Dragons Blood Island and when you finally do locate it you’re certain to let your eye pause on it for a while and let a wistful, ‘I wonder?’ pass over you. Then, if you have any sense, you’ll turn a couple of pages to the Indonesia section. If, on the other hand, you don’t have any sense then you might do some research on it. A few minutes of that should be enough to convince you that Bali is actually a much better plan. Unfortunately for them neither Brandon Foster nor my other travel companion, Toby Adamsom, had good maps or any thoughts of research and so with a bit of, “It’s a paradise archipelago in the middle of the ocean” type of tourist brochure talk they became easy victims for me to lure in. Several weeks later the three of us found ourselves thrown into the type of remote and wild surf experience that can only be provided by an unheard of island rumoured to contain the secret of eternal life and marked on ancient mariner’s maps as a lair for dragons, pirates and sorcerers.

There's almost as much mystery around the islands today as there was back then - possibly even more. Dragons Blood Island used to be a convenient resting stop for boats plying the old ocean trade routes, but with improvements in technology over the past few centuries the need to rest and re-supply on Dragons Blood Island died off and that contact with the rest of the world disappeared at about the same time as the dragons. Today it’s the kind of place where the elderly still know how to make fire by rubbing sticks together and can easily recall the days when no-one had heard of money. Until the airport was built four or five years ago it was, for all intents and purposes, impossible to reach. Heavy monsoonal winds and huge swells kept, and continue to keep, boat access restricted to half the year only and, for much of the past century, it was ruled by one of the most xenophobic governments in the world and visas were about as common as a fire breathing dragon. When that government collapsed the islands braced themselves for the outside world, however with no air links, only the occasional boat coming from the islands violent neighbours it was never likely to become the next Ibiza. Today there is an airport and two flights a week arrive here from one of its more stable neighbours. There are also the first schools springing up as well as clinics and even electricity and a telephone or two in the islands village like capital. Rumours speak of a tarmac road, although my backside certainly doesn’t recall ever driving along this. Even with these gentle changes Dragons Blood Island remains a painfully poor place where the vast majority live well below the absolute poverty line. But maybe its isolation could be about to become its saviour as, thanks to a host of endemic plants and animals and a village life that until very recently had never heard of the West, UNESCO have declared the entire archipelago a Man and Biosphere Reserve and the government, with ideas inspired from the Galapagos, have started pushing it as an eco-tourism destination. Last year was the best yet for tourism - four hundred of us decided to give the Mediterranean a miss, though even then more than half of that total were people arriving on business from nearby countries, but still that’s more foreign interest than they’ve had in centuries.

Dragons Blood Island might be a more popular holiday spot than ever before, but its inhabitants are certainly not yet used to the strange ways of the white man. Sometimes not even the strange looks. On my first walk around the capital small children spontaneously burst into tears on getting a glimpse of my face and mothers scalded me for frightening their offspring so unnecessarily. Toby faired a little better and gathered an enthusiastic audience around him. Any meaningful cultural interaction that this could have led too though was somewhat spoilt by his disappearing tissue magic show. Anywhere else and it’s a classic ice-breaker, but here, well the performance started well enough, but when it came to the actual magic part of the trick the excited chattering gave way to a stony silence followed by accusing screams of Toby being the Devil incarnate. Brandon, well quite frankly no-one can blame them for not knowing what to make of him.

Our ancient 727 had wobbled its way to Dragons Blood Island earlier that day, crossing a sea that had turned itself into one giant white cap and landed with a bump into the heart of a hurricane. Our guide, Jamilah, who met us at the airport, responded to our questions about the wind with a gentle, “It’s the windy season, so there’s always a little wind”. Jamilah had clearly been turned crazy by this constant ‘little’ wind, for it was the type of ‘little’ wind that in Europe caused houses to fall down and as if to reinforce this point, a small child passing by was promptly blown over. The wind turned out to be the dominating factor as we scoured the island for waves and any hurricanes and madness that we thought we’d encountered at the airport were actually mere gentle teasers in comparison to what we’d find elsewhere.

The track out to the eastern tip of the island ran along the north coast, a swell sheltered and surfless shoreline, but one that took us past cove after complicated cove and water so blue it would most likely glow in the dark. Dozens of schools of dolphins played in the shallows and came forward to investigate us when we swam near them. If you could ignore the steadily increasing wind then it was basically the friendly tropical paradise where nothing, not even one of the numerous goats would dream of hurting you. But that was the flat calm north coast. We were interested in the south, west and east coasts and as we’d already discovered they were different, they were the kind of places where dragons once flew and the oceans were wild and killer goats and monsters of the deep lived.

I carefully opened the jeep door and stepped out onto the scrubby dune. Visibility had been reduced to a few metres by the clouds of wind blown sand and within seconds this same sand had left me feeling as if a cheese grater had been run over me. I tried to have a piss but before it had got anywhere near making contact with the ground it had been picked up and blown back in my face. Dripping piss, rapidly loosing skin to the sand and wondering why on earth I’d been mad enough to come here I turn to survey the beach in front of me and see Brandon, who seemed positively stoked with the conditions, leaping about trying to get into his rash vest before being skinned alive. A small beach of ghost white sand was clinging to this final corner of the island and beyond it enormous swells shattered across an offshore reef and sheets of spray hurtled across the ocean. It was the kind of place where sharks just lay dreaming of surfers. Unfortunately the reefs were, much to mine and Toby’s disappointment, too crazy even for world class sponger Brandon to consider. Instead he had his eye on the wedgy little left that kept rearing up on the beach and he was determined that I join him. By now I’d spent enough time on Dragons Blood Island, falling into giant pot holes and drowning under layers of dust and mud in the back of a cramped jeep (tastefully decorated in goats’ skin and teddy bear pictures) to know that no matter how good the waves were that I was just not going to enjoy this surf. In fact after each session I’d act like the Pope and kiss the ground grateful to still be alive and sane. Don’t think that the waves we found couldn’t be enjoyed, because we found waves. Oh yes, we found a lot of waves, everywhere we went we found waves, east coast wedges, west coast points and south coast barrels. And here’s something else for you. For six months of the year it doesn’t go flat. Not once, not even a little bit and there isn’t a single other surfer to share it with you. Sometimes you could think we were mad not to have thought of this place before.

The wedgy little left was a powerful number and full of tubes. Under normal conditions it would be a great wave and crowded with surfers from miles around. It would be the kind of place where you’d want to hang out for a few days, a week even, but on Dragons Blood Island it just scared the crap out of me. The wind was now blowing a steady storm force offshore with gusts well and truly into hurricane force. I could see nothing at all. A shark could be polishing his knife and fork right beside me and I wouldn’t have been able to see him through the spray.

That night we lay in our sleeping bags on the concrete floor of the school we’d been allowed to sleep in and spoke the words of the insane, “Maybe tomorrow will be glassy”. Outside, the wind was howling stronger than ever and I was sure I could feel my sanity slipping away with each gust. Our journey had begun several days earlier and had involved more hours in the back of the jeeps, more potholes and more dust, but finally we reached the west coast and almost a reward to make twice as many potholes worthwhile. Climbing to the top of a cliff we were greeted by a perfect desert beach of shiny white dunes and a lagoon of luminous toothpaste blue water, but as for waves it seemed that this bay was just a little too sheltered. On a bigger day the potential was certainly there as cautiously peeling down the edge of the cliff towards the lagoon were tiny left handers.

The maps we had showed no dragons but they did show a potentially swell exposed bay around ten kilometres to the south. Ten kilometres that on one of the worst roads I’ve ever travelled along took a further nine hours and this was just the dry season. The wet season, well that would be committing yourself to sitting in a muddy hole for six months. Arriving after dark in a filthy poor fishing village we were steered by some village elders to the proudest house in the village where we were told we could sleep in the single room for the night. Pretty soon after the local kids got wind of our arrival and in they streamed, thousands of them, it didn’t take long until there were so many kids in the room staring at us that it became difficult to breathe, but still they kept coming, struggling into gaps that even a sardine would have problems with. Into this fray appeared our dinner, rice and goat, cooked up by the invisible women of the village and, with the excitement of watching the foreigners eating, came the entire adult male population. The walls of the building were, I swear, starting to bend outwards, just one or two more people and the building would have popped.

To my complete astonishment the house didn’t explode. In fact with the strength of the wind that night I actually changed my mind and thought the opposite may happen and I barely slept with worry about the walls being blown in on me. When daylight arrived I found that much of our audience had already returned in preparation for a solid days staring. Brandon was about to give them something to really stare at. As soon as the first glimmers of dawn had come Brandon had gone off to explore the bay for waves and as Toby and I drunk our early morning tea, made from the brackish water of the local spring, Brandon returned with the news we’d been waiting for. There were waves.

Just past the village a series of low headlands split the bay into smaller and smaller bays. On the leeside of each of these headlands broke overhead lefthanders. The waves went on and on, through fat sections, through hollow sections, through walled up sections and there were dozens of them. Each little bay providing yet another reason to pack your bags and buy a map.

When, like the Pied Piper, Brandon led Toby, myself and a village of spectators over to the waves my first comment was, “That’s sick. It’s going off”. My second comment was, “Fuck that. We’ll die if we go out there. It’s the best set up for sharks I’ve ever seen and look at that wind. It’ll drag you out to sea in seconds. No, Brandon, that ones all yours. You’re the pro, you go in and I’ll come in if you get any good ones”. My fears were, I felt, justified as Brandon had failed to mention that in order to get to the waves you had to walk along a beach littered in the remains of sharks and that the wind was blowing storm force offshore. And so, not looking ever so pleased at my decision Brandon walked to the far end of the point and started to paddle out as Toby and I got ourselves comfortable on the cliffs.

I think it was about thirty seconds after Toby said, “Any minute now we’ll see a dark shadow come towards him”, that we saw a dark shadow go towards him. Brandon had by now made it to the take off zone of the outside point where 4-6ft lefts broke for a couple of hundred metres before fading out and re-appearing on the inside point as a shorter, hollow ride. Once he’d reached the take off zone though he didn’t stop moving, the wind just dragged him further out to sea and great sheets of spray hid him from view. After much frantic paddling back towards shore Brandon made it to the inside point and tried to catch a few waves, but was blown off the back each time. Quite frankly this was the most entertaining thing I’d seen in a long time. And then right on cue came the dark shadow, “Hey Toby is that a turtle swimming towards Brandon”? The eight foot Hammerhead Shark surfaced just a metre away from our hapless hero, circled him once, peeped its head out of the water to look at him and then disappeared from view. At about the same time as Brandon, legs in the air, finger tips scraping the water surface and arms spinning like propellers sprint paddled for the nearest bit of land there was a snorting noise from above us and the devil eyed goat charged.

Since our arrival on the island one thing had been bothering me. Did a constant gale turn people crazy? I’d heard of it happening in other places so why not here? Jamilah however insisted that no-one had ever gone loopy because of the wind, but I wasn’t convinced. I mean lets face it; even the goats had lost their minds (admittedly not a hard thing) and thought they were vicious predators. And the plants, well they were just plain weird, cucumbers the size of a person and a tree that they say bleeds for the memory of dragons. If nature went a bit off the rails here then the people surely had to go mad?

And now I had the proof I’d been waiting for, because when finally the three of us were reunited at the foot of the cliff and our composure regained we noticed something strange. The villagers weren’t fawning over us as if we were brave knights who’d survived a bloody battle with a dragon. No, they were simply laughing at us, and Brandon in particular, “Why have you got out”? They demanded between giggles, “because of the huge shark”, Brandon replied in surprise. Almost hysterical laughter followed and knowing nods of the head, “That wasn’t big,” one of them volunteered, “that was just a baby, you should see the big ones. They look like houses”. Then with straight faces the pleading of the truly insane started, “It’s difficult for us to take our boats out and fish with this wind. On that board you can go out with our nets and catch it for us to eat”. At last I knew they were crazy, but, thank God I thought, they’re not mad enough to want goat for lunch…..

Many thanks to Oceansurf Publications, www.oceansurfpublications.co.uk and C-Skins wetsuits, www.c-skins.com for trying to send us to our deaths and to Future Tours Industries www.ftiyemen.com and Socotra Eco-Tourism Society, www.socotraisland.org/ses for helping them sort the logistics of it.