Socotra   forever

It’s attractive, it’s a convenient 30-minute drive east from Hadiboh, and it’s great for a recuperative dip when you’ve just arrived. The good former ecolodge has closed but basic camping is still possible. Plus, there’s an impressive giant sand dune which the energetic can climb and slide down.

The claim that it was called Delisha because someone exclaimed “it’s delicious!” might be a touch fanciful, however.
Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), the exhaustingly prolific German biologist, naturalist, evolutionist, artist, philosopher and doctor who spent his life researching and illustrating flora and fauna, sailed past the northers coast on 18 May 1882: his highly stylised painting of a sand dune with the same date is most probably Delisha.
He describes ‘the picturesque coast of Socotra, where the ravines are marked by immense fields of snow-white sand, looking like glaciers sloping to the sea’. Nearby Delisha village has an important archaeological site.