Day 8

Well, couldn't believe that, we would finish packing in just an hour after the kids went to bed last night. We had to leave our holiday villa by 10 am and our flight back home was around 20:35 in the evening. So, a lot of time to kill.

Parasailing @ Chrysochou Bay, Polis

According to the plan, we drove to Latchi with all our bags packed in the car boot to retrieve BigBro's water beaker from the Latchi Watersports Centre, which we had left behind on Monday. After saying our thanks, we went to the Polis beach. The kids had a good swim in the sea after building sand castles.

Polis Beach

Then we had a mouthwatering and earthy lunch at the local family run Karouzis tavern, which was almost about to close down for the afternoon siesta. The kids were kept company by several family cats, who were disappointed (I think) by our disinterest in feeding them. After enjoying a shot of Cypriot coffee we made our way towards the pottery shopping area along the Paphos - Limassol road, a few blocks after the Debenhams roundabout. We wanted to buy some earthen bowls. Next stop before driving to the airport, while the kids were sleeping in the cool air conditioning of the car, was the Papa Antoniou bakery to buy the ever popular Tahini pie, the delicious local pitta bread, some baklava & a whole load of cookies. Why can't they bake the pitta so soft and tasteful back home is still a mystery. Maybe, it's my project to reckon with in the near future.

Shadows of clouds across the sea

With our handbags full of the baked goods, we checked in at the Paphos International airport for the return flight, unknown to us that, the sweet syrup from the baklava has already made its way to the rest of the bakery products contained in the same bag. Well, at least, everything and everyone made its way home safely, after a brief hour-long fiasco of one of our checked-in bags being picked up by a Mr Greene at the Stansted airport, it being completely identical to his own bag, excepting the weight. I should remember to tie in a special ribbon in each of our bags for our next trip.

Cyprus still will remain very close to our hearts for a long to come. We have already looked at the plane ticket prices for this time next year (again)! BigBro still misses his 2 stones from the Kissonerga beach that, he had to throw away at the Paphos airport changing room since his jeans' pockets were getting too heavy to carry them back home and LilBro is heard quite often singing "We are going on a Cyprus holiday .."

Day 7

Tuesday was spent again in the swimming pool and a visit to the Kissonerga beach.

Sun behind the clouds @ Kissonerga

Peyia

Mountain overlooking Peyia village

Time to pack our bags for our return journey back home next day. Again, we had some wonderful memories we would be carrying and a host of towns and villages that remained to be seen - the whole Eastern and Central parts were left untouched by us- - itinerary for our next visit!

Day 6

After our morning swimming pool time, we drove down to the Latchi harbour and hired a 70hp powerboat from the Latchi Watersports Centre named "Life of Riley".

Life of Riley

The very helpful twins Lucy and Emma, from North London themselves and in Latchi for a working holiday for 3 years in a row during their summer holidays, guided us through the whole process of detailing on a map all the viewpoints of the North side of the Akamas peninsula, where we could drive or stop for a break. 

Navigation map along the Akamas

George from Northern Ireland (it's a small world, again), showed the Captain of our boat aka DH all the intricacies of driving the boat and off we went with our life jackets on and our coolbox packed with water and juice, our swimming costumes ready in our backpacks. We were safely guided out of the packed harbour. 

Fishing boat @ Fontana Amrosa

The thrill of driving a speedboat over the choppy waters of the Mediterranean was exhilarating. We had been advised to keep a safe distance of about 200m from the shoreline, but to avoid any risks we misjudged the distance to be 1km. And, hence we missed all the viewpoints we were supposed to look out for - Aphrodite Rocks, St George's Island, Amphitheatre Bay and lastly The Blue Lagoon. We ended up anchored at the edge of the penisula. 
How did we get to know? Well, my DH checked the GPS on his iPhone (apparently 3G mobile network in the Mediterranean around the island was very good, even better than VHF radio signal on the boat!) Life without GPS seems impossible to us! Well, we still tried to swim in the blue waves, so clear that you could see the sandy bottom. The current in the waves was so strong that, BigBro was floating away from the boat & needed to be dragged back, then we found that the anchor was moving away from the shore. Next, we turned the boat around and started to head back. We stopped at Manolis Bay for a quick break. We reached the Latchi harbour with the sun setting behind the clouds, an afternoon well spent in the sea breeze, you could taste the salt on your fingertips or on our kids' cheeks.

Latchi Bay

Day 5

It was supposed to be another heatwave day, so we decided to head up to the mountains again, this time to the Chantara waterfalls. We would take the same route as the day before to Kato Platres and then turn left to the village of Foini, which turned out to be slightly bigger than being tiny.

Narrow street in Foini

Local pottery workshop

I got out of the car and was looking for somebody to ask directions to a local pottery workshop (which Foini is popular for), when I was hailed by several "hallos". I looked up and saw a Tamil lady waving at me! Along with her, came down a Nepali lady and a North Indian lady, all of whom were fluent in the local Cypriot language. I told them of my enquiry and they called up somebody on the phone and then took me to a local pottery workshop. 

Later I came to know that, the Tamil and Nepali ladies cared for a local aged lady.

While making our purchase from the pottery studio, we were self introduced to the owner, Mr Theofanis Pilavakis. He has a small private museum of his own. He gave us a brief tour & told us the history of his 400 year old ancestral home and the ways of life - hundreds of years ago.. 

Mr Theofanis Pilavakis in his museum

He had previously been in England with his wife for many years and had worked in the English fashion industry. He was a keen photographer as well. We spent some informative time looking at a Guinness world record holder 2000 litres ceramic jug for storing olive oil, an ancient olive press, wine press, huge clay pots for storing wine, clay toys, candle holders amongst others. His family had been potters for generations.

The Guinness world record holder

After finishing the tour and getting directions for the Chantara Waterfalls, we drove up to the base of the falls. 

Bus stop @ the Chantara Waterfalls

It was beautiful and made a small rock pool amidst the stones. There were some stony steps going up the cliff side and after we climbed up, we found the upper part of the falls, which made an even bigger rock pool. We waded through the cold water in bare feet, it was inviting us to take a bath. 

Upper Chantara falls

After some time, we climbed back down, back to our car and drove down to Latchi, a harbour near Polis. We made enquiries about a self-drive boat to sail along the Akamas peninsula the next day. It reminded us of our previous holiday, when we used to come down here often.

Day 4

This was a very quiet morning, instead of our usual swim in the pool, we were getting ready to drive up to the Troodos mountains in order to escape a heat wave of 35*C. The sun was so bright, it hurt my eyes to look outside.

The temperature climbed up to 34*C. We aimed to drive up to the Caledonia waterfalls. Only with the help of a map (and no Sat Nav!), I navigated the car right up to the starting point of the Caledonia walking trail at the Psilo Dendro trout farm/restaurant near the village of Platres. It was a relatively short walk, being only 3 km from the start to the finish, running beside small mountain streams.

Mountain stream

But, after about 1km, LilBro had to be carried about. He got tired of jumping up and down the stones. Still we kept climbing up. But, after a while, we had to give up. It was getting too steep. In order to keep BigBro happy and keep on climbing waterfalls, we showed him a small trek to a narrow mountain stream all by himself. He was very happy to slide and climb down to the stream and climb back again. Then we made our way back to the car park.
According to the next agenda on our itinerary, we started driving to Vasa, a small village with supposedly excellent local Cypriot dishes. Again, we started driving up the mountains, through a Wildlife conservation area and through completely barren lands. Vasa turned out to be a tiny sleepy village with a central church, the bells of which were ringing when we tried to reverse back a narrow alley. No one was out and about. There were only 2 taverns, out of the first one, a man looked out with an unfriendly face and so that one was rejected for our dinner plan. The second tavern seemed to be solely based on a narrow cobbled street, the looks of which were frowned upon by our fellow passengers. So, back home to Chlorakas, where we found Angelika Tavern (seemed to be very popular with the tourists) for dinner.


Reflections
One thing was very particular about those sleepy little mountain villages - you might miss them in the blink of an eye. Some of them would have a central church and then the number of village houses will be slightly more. Old men and women would be sitting outside, practically on the so called narrow "streets" looking at the passing cars with a non-caring attitude. We had to take extra care to see that we didn't hurt them while driving, but they seemed completely indifferent about it. You could find a "street" only in a tiny village and they were really very narrow. So, whenever we saw a "street" coming up while driving through the mountain villages, we expected a very narrow road with space for only one car to pass through.

Day 3

We seemed to have fallen into a nice routine. After breakfast, have a 2 hour long splash about in the villa swimming pool, have a shower, a nice lunch and then go out in the afternoon when the blaze of the sun has cooled off a bit.

The ice cream van used to turn up everyday around noon and parked just beside our villa, whom we could hear from the pool. It was quite a task keeping the kids in the pool while it was there.

We changed our hired car yesterday. The previous car had its gearbox all "mashed up" (as per DH), so you didn't know if you were driving it in the 1st or the 3rd gear! The car hire company came down with an automatic Honda Jazz, which turned out to be an oil guzzling zero-power machine up on the mountains. Oh, how we missed our own car!

Our 2nd hired Honda Jazz

Sunset @ Kissonerga

The sea felt quite warm, in fact so warm that we longed for a swim, but we were without a change of clothes.







All these play made it quite late for us to do the 45 minute drive down to Latchi. Instead, we drove back to have a long dinner at the local Pentaras Tavern, which consisted of the Cypriot Meze, and as usual I could not finish.

We went down to the Kissonerga beach on our supposed drive to Latchi. We watched a beautiful sunset with the boys splashing in the sea.

Day 2

We were sweltering in the very late summer heat, 30*C during the day and 22*C at night, sweat always appearing out of nowhere as soon as you stepped out of the air conditioning.

We spent a lot of time pool-side in the morning.

In the afternoon we set out for Paphos. We were trying to find the Cyprus Tourism Office (CTO) to get some maps of the cities and the regions. We parked twice in 2 different places to ask for directions, the directions were specific, but we still managed to get lost in the one way systems. On our way we drove through ghost shopping malls, a byproduct of recession? (but the general atmosphere seemed to be somewhat better than last year!). Old women were sitting outside the closed-down shops, they couldn't understand English, but at least they managed to say "Don't speak English"!

The CTO was a tiny little establishment administered by a woman in her 50's wearing a lot of eye make-up. But, she did give us the right directions to the local pottery shops. We got all the free maps we needed and headed out again in the summer heat. To cool off, we got ice-creams, 1 Euro a scoop, but it was melting fast.. 

Another good thing that happened was we got a deal on BigBro's summer slippers for 5 Euros a pair in one of the shoe shops .. quite a bargain. We could have easily gone overboard with LilBro's shoes as well (all the kids shoes were 5 Euros a pair), but sanity kicked in and decided they are not needed. There were a few other shops with a lot of discount in store as well. But, we had a fear of getting a parking ticket on our car as the parking meter where we had parked was out of order. So, we hurried back to our car, suppressing my shopping carnage and everything was fine.