63. Cyprus. 3.

Wednesday 16^th July.   We decided it would be a good time to catch up with our blog and also emails and remained at the hotel for most of the day. It was a very quiet and relaxing day and in the evening we went for a walk of about 7 km along the higher part of the village before wending our way down to the usual restaurant for dinner. It had been a warm day and the evening was pleasant without even a breeze.

The restaurant was well patronised and we met an English couple in their 70’s who had been living in Cyprus for 12 years.. They had built a house in Trimiklini, a village nearby, and seemed to spend their time maintaining their garden and entertaining their two daughters and families who come over from England two or three times a year. The couple had holidayed regularly in Cyprus before deciding to live here and the wife had not been back to UK since making that decision.

An interesting evening and when we came back to the hotel we had a quick look at our emails and read an email just arrived from Lionel and Gloria. We took the opportunity to ring on Skype and speak with them at 7.00 am their time for an entertaining chat and catch up on news from these delightful friends in Whangarei.

 

Thursday 17^th July. After an early start we took to our car for another tour around part of the Island. We drove down to the coast at Pafos through many small villages one of which, Agios Ioannos seemed like a ghost town as we only saw one person as we cruised through. We wondered how the people in any of the villages were able to get anything to grow as the land was really parched. . This came more to mind when we arrived at a large earth dam built to assist in the irrigation of the surrounding land. There was plenty of room for a lake as big as Karapiro and we could see along the sides where the water may have been up to in the past. However the spillway did not look like it had ever seen water over the top and in fact the water was so low in the reservoir it did not seem possible any water could be pumped out.

We later found out that Cyprus has been in a drought for the last four years and water is being shipped to the island from Greece using 5 tankers. As we left the dam we came across orchards of olive trees that were either dead or dying from the lack of water. The locals certainly have a problem as the water levels are only 8.5% of what they should be. This explained why Chris had commented that it was much dryer than it had been on her previous visit.

We had heard that Pafos, a tourist city on the coast, was a destination for many English people. We had a short tour of the city and were not impressed with the beaches crowded with tourists roasting themselves. Many large hotels and apartment blocks were along the waterfront to cater for tourists and in the land surrounding the city we saw many new housing estates that we understood were being built for people emigrating from England and France. This influx of course would present a further problem for the supply of water.

We were pleased to move out of Pafos and drive up the coast towards Polis, a small town about 30 km north. From Polis we drove further along the coast until near the border with the Turkish area then turned inland. The road climbed steeply away from the ocean and then we were in the forest area. This was unusual as we drove for 60 km just below the ridges of the hills and did not drop down once into any valleys. The winding road was all amongst pine and cedar trees, with a steep stony bank rising on one side and a very steep drop on the other. The road was an excellent two lane road with a good surface with a barrier on the outside for the full length and easy driving. We only met 3 vehicles in the first 50 km and each time we stopped for photo shots the silence was awesome.

Finally we arrived near a small village of Pedoulos as the sun was getting low in the sky and visited a small church on a prominent site with a large (about 20 metres high) cross built alongside. We could have waited there until the sun set but being unsure of the remainder of the road pushed on for another 5 or so kilometres to another vantage point where we could see the cross in the distance and from there we watched the sun go down behind the hills in a spectacular sunset. From that point we passed through the area where the bush fire had been on Tuesday and realised it was only about 2 km in a straight line from our hotel. Quite a large area on both sides of the road had been burnt but thankfully there had been no wind and the fire was contained.

We parked our car at the hotel and after a quick change we returned to our regular restaurant for dinner with the full moon lighting up the walk back up to our

 

Sunday July 20 Our last entry was on Thursday which shows just how relaxed and slowed down we had become. It was great just to enjoy breakfast on the lovely terrace for the 7^th day in a row. Breakfast included tomatoes, cucumbers and olives and a selection of cheeses and cold meats but best of all is the creamy Cyprus yoghurt with sunflower, flax and seseme seeds all drenched with local runny honey.

Most evenings we walked down to the village of Platres and stopped at the same restaurant for a wonderful ‘Village salad’ but one night we did have kleftica … never had we tasted such tender, melt-in-the-mouth lamb, served with a generous portion of chips and salad ….. and … a glass of the house white wine. You can understand why we stayed and took a ‘long full stop’ in the Cyprus Troodos mountains.

Walking

Our journey in East Africa had seen us lose some of our fitness level and this was an ideal place to try and restore that. Fresh air, a wonderful climate, no malaria mosquitoes or other tropical diseases to avoid and we could even drink the local tap water. So each day we set ourselves a target of doing a good walk having started the first one with 4km.

With a map of the village the next evening we set out for around a 7km walk circling the village which provided some wonderful views even as far as the coast. The following evening we circled the village by a different route and enjoyed seeing the local houses and churches. Along the way there was the occasional ripe plum for picking hanging over a footpath and we tried a few and thought of our plum tree at Fire Station Lane. The village houses seem to hang on the sides of the very steep valley sides.

Saturday evening we planned again to do a walk and as we had spent much of the day planning the meeting up with Melanie and Oliver in Prague on August 17^th we felt like a good leg stretch.

We had seen this walk called the ‘Artemis’ walk which was 7 km starting out from the village of Troodos about 10 minutes drive away. At 5 pm we set off on the track which led us right around the highest peak called Mount Olympus at an altitude of 1700-1750m.

It was a very beautiful walk, it was almost all on the level following a single lane track through thickets of black pine and juniper trees. One juniper was 800 years old. There were superb views in every direction as we walked and walked and walked. Along the way small signs indicated the distance we had travelled and we passed by 7 and then 8 and finally as we reached 9 km we met up again with the road. For almost 3 hours we had not seen one person or heard one car. It was so very quiet and peaceful. Towards the end of the walk we had begun to wonder about the distance and somewhere we had this suspicion that we might have muddled the ‘Atlante’ walk with the ‘Artemis’ walk. Well … they both begin with an ‘A’.

Sure enough that was what we had done and we still had 3 km to go back to the village of Troodos and the parked car. Our pace slowed a little towards the end and it was just getting dark as we arrived back at Troodos … 12km wiser. Tiredness won over the Village Salad and we ate oranges and bananas in our hotel room and had an early night.