Socotra in December

Getting there, and what is open

December is peak season and the hardest month of the year to arrange late. Three to six months of lead time is the published guidance, and the reason is capacity rather than popularity: limited seats against steady demand means December trips sell out on flight availability well before operators run out of ground capacity. Treat the seat as the thing you are booking and the ground arrangements as the thing that follows it.

The route is Yemenia from Jeddah on Tuesdays and Thursdays, roughly $950 to $1,200 return with a refuelling stop on the return leg. Arrive in Jeddah the day before rather than the same morning. There are no cash machines on the island, so the trip runs on US dollars in cash, and a drone permit is $100 in cash on arrival.

Sea and wind

December is the windiest of the seven open months, at a mean of 23.9 km/h, ahead of January's 21.2 and more than double April's 11.1. Rainfall is 14 mm and humidity 67 percent.

Nights average 23.5 C, the third coolest of the year after February and January, and days 27.5 C. The best-time guide counts December and January evenings as cool enough for camping to be comfortable, which is the month's practical advantage over the warmer spring.

Bloom and wildlife

December is the quietest month of the open season for the island's signature plants. The bottle tree's secondary flush has finished and its peak is still two months off, and the frankincense is in dry-season form rather than fresh resin.

December is the Socotra chameleon's egg-laying month, with clutches of 32 to 52 eggs, among the largest of any chameleon anywhere. The mating season, when the males show themselves, was October and November, and the hatchlings come in April and May; the notes give no visibility advantage for December itself.

The resident endemic birds are inside their October to April window: the starling, reported to nest in hollow dragon blood branches, and the golden-winged grosbeak, the most widespread of the endemics and usually heard before it is seen.

Photography

December has the shortest days of the year, about 11.4 hours around the solstice against 12.9 in June. That is the whole of the seasonal swing at this latitude, so the dry-season light and low dust cost you little in usable hours.

The wind is the planning constraint. At 23.9 km/h it is the highest of the open months, which argues for the low-wind interior, the deep canyons and the sheltered marine sites over the exposed capes and most of the dune fields.