Socotra, Desert Island

   Oh, the allure of travel, to journey to foreign locations, to see sights unseen in the USA, to meet beautiful exotic people.  Now days we can do some of this thorough our computer monitor. For instance, the exotic and remote island of Socotra between Africa and India, isolated geographically from Africa, and like Madagascarcarries a wealth of species seen nowhere else.  This is a place that is relatively untraveled, only two roads have been built, and it is trying to keep visitation low, with an eye toward eco-tourism.

  Dark Roasted Blend has a most beautiful and excellent photo essay depicting some of the sights, both human and nature on this small island.

   I’d love to spend a few days poking around the foundations of these buildings. What architecture! How deep do they dig their foundations? How is their mortar mixed? The terraces to the right side of the photo is something I’d like to see.  How much can they produce from those terraces? Where does their water come from? What agricultural techniques do they use? Modern man with our fast machinery will tend to overlook this type of environment, it is too steep for agricultural machinery…the ‘economy of scale’ that is needed to make a profit in modern Ag systems is missing here.  Yet I imagine a fellow getting up in the morning, working for hours of the terraces at a pace suited to him, a long afternoon siesta (common in hot areas), then working in later afternoon until dark, to return home to a nice meal and loving arms.

   In general, people are the same the world over.

   This photo is spectacular…. I love building with stone, and the hut is similar to stone huts I’ve seen in other countries. I guess when you come down to it, there’s only so many different ways to build a simple stone hut, it’s not unusual that they pretty much look alike no matter what country you are in.

  I notice that like me and others who build in stone, there is a huge pile of stone building material at hand for future work. I myself have many tons of stone piled in different locations at Rivenrock…. on occasion I’ll need some for a project, and I can retrieve some from my piles.  Yes, I have a great many piles of stone… right now I am working on a stone hut that will have some fifteen tons of stone in its construction.

   Note the cattle eating the cactus.. indeed cactus is seen as a very important forage crop in many dry areas of the world.

   These are Dragon Blood Trees. A very striking yucca-looking tree.  They are also very valuable… I recall ten years ago reading in the paper that some patron of the Santa Barbara Country Club donated two Dragon’s Blood Trees to the club to be planted at the entrance to the golf course. They were valued at ten thousand dollars each.

   Madame Gonna Walska’s ‘Lotusland’ has the largest collection of Dragon Blood Trees outside of Socotra.

   Some Lotusland links….

Lotusland Official Page

Reality Sandwich-Lotusland

Our own photo essay on Lotusland

A good friend’s photo essay on Lotusland