Wildlife-spotting in Kyrenia

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The 'border guards' on the Greek Cypriot side only ask what our nationality is and wave us through when we tell them. We leave the Republic of Cyprus and thus the European Union. The UN Buffer Zone is lined by some surprisingly well-maintained buildings, including a German-Cypriot Culture Club, and there are tri-lingual signs saying 'No Photography'. The Turkish Cypriot 'border guards' give us a form to fill in and check our passports. We get a stamp serving as our 90-day 'visa' for the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (TRNC), a de facto independent state recognized only by Turkey. We enter Lefkoşa, or North Nicosia.

After a bit of confusion and disorientation, we manage to navigate to Kyrenia Gate, one of the entrances to the Old City (well, the Northern part of it), where I exchange money in a bank at a favourable rate. We flag down a bus for the seaside town of Kyrenia, hop on, and are immediately offered a double seat by an old fella, who moves to a smaller seat next to the bus driver and also helps us stow away our luggage. I happily dig out the 'teşekkür ederim' which fell into disuse after my 2009 trip to Turkey, and we exchange pleasantries in basic English.

40 minutes later we arrive in Kyrenia, or Girne, as the Turkish Cypriots call it. A cheap hotel is found quickly. As we check in the owner asks where we travelled in the south. When we mention we passed by Limassol, he says it's his home, but he hasn't been back since 1974. His eyes get that faraway look that betray a deep-seated grief and bitterness about his forced relocation. I say who knows, maybe one day, just to say something, and he says yeah, inshallah.

Strolling along the pretty harbour, we get approached by touts from the restaurants that line the promenade. They call out to you Arab-style: "Hey, my fren'" or "Excuse me, sir! One question! Where you from, sir?" without being as obnoxious, in-your-face or persistent as their Middle East and North African brethren.

We eat a light dinner of vegetable dürüm in a small eatery and wash it all down with fresh orange juice and a büyük (big) çay, my beloved Turkish fragrant strong black tea, the real shit. Our waiter appears to speak decent English, but always when we order or ask something, he just says yes, but doesn't appear to understand. His practised faux-grovelling and the way he moves about makes me think of him as the Turkish Cypriot Basil Fawlty. After we finish eating, he brings out two kücük (small) çay on the house.

Before we go to sleep that night, we hear the wailing muezzin of the mosque next door to our hotel. Somehow I find it atmospheric and almost hypnotizing, despite having heard it many times before in countries where Islam is the dominant religion. At 5am the muezzin is back like a relentless little earwig, reminding us that prayer is better than sleep. I nod off again, fulfilling my duty as a kafir (infidel).



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For breakfast, we choose one of the numerous cafés, geared more towards tourists and expats, that line a tranquil plaza between the cobbled old town and a nice little park. We eat the usual Cypriot breakfast, which is not as great but more expensive than the other times we had it. At the café next to ours, a middle-aged Western lady with long, curly ginger hair arrives. She wears a green singlet and beige shorts. She sports a thin, black armband tattoo on her upper arm, a woeful job, plus it doesn't help that the colour has faded with time and too many sunburns. She makes her presence known by calling out in a loud voice: "I heard a rumour that the Steve was back in town!", walking towards an equally middle-aged expat in a checkered shirt sitting in the café. His hairline is very receded, and he wears sunglasses and drinks an Efes at 9am to, or so I presume, battle last night's hangover. They hug and exchange courtesies like "Good to see you, you're looking great!", "So are you, great to have you back", etc., and I can only imagine how many alcohol-fuelled expat parties, barbecues and birthdays they'd experienced together, getting wasted and bitching about how the locals are rip-offs and thieves, before the Steve mysteriously disappeared overnight.

She greets the Turkish waiter at our café.

"Good morning, darling!"
- "Morning, darling! How are you today?" he replies.
"Bloody marvellous, what about you?"
- "Bloody fabulous!"
"See, we're all doing bloody great today. And how about you, darling?" she asks another waiter.
- "Not bad." he says, looking not very happy.
"Ah, there you go, there's always one who's not bloody marvellous! What's wrong, darling?"
- "Oh, nothing..."

We pay up and leave them to it. I would actually be interested in further exploring the British expat microcosm of Kyrenia, yet somehow I don't think they are too keen on letting muckraking outsiders in on their secrets. I can only guess and imagine what implausible highs and enigmatic abysses they undergo beyond that trusty foundation of sun, beer, football and real estate.

We stop by at a tiny local roadside kafeneio for some Turkish çay to forget the Lipton we were served before. The waiter welcomes and serves us like Pashas, and the location is great for people-watching. In front of the café, the owner has displayed two dogs in cardboard boxes as an eyecatcher for tourists. These "oh, look at the boo-boo-boo"-tourists can then donate a small amount to help pay for the dog food, or the owner's new flatscreen, depending on how you see it. Don't worry, all these dogs do is sleep all day anyway, and they look quite comfortable and cute snoozing away in their boxes.

There's just something about Kyrenia that makes us feel utterly at ease and chilled out. It might be the picturesque harbour, the slow pace, the friendly and welcoming people, the positive vibe, or all those things combined. Anyway, we change our plans and stay an extra night instead of going to Famagusta and Salamis. I can already hear the purists scream "How can you skip Famagusta and Salamis, they are a must-see for any traveller, absolutely essential, ...", but we'd rather miss a few sites, be less stressed, and thoroughly enjoy the places we like instead.

There's a tourist couple stopping to look at the dogs and donate some money, all smiles, and as they stand there, all conversations grind to a halt, for one can't talk when one's jaw has dropped. Even me, usually a very vocal opponent of discourteous gawking, can't help but stare in disbelief with eyes wide open, for they are the best couple ever, I'm telling ya.

The woman looks a bit like Vickie Pollard left lying in the sun for 30+ years. Her peroxide blonde hair is braided, with some of the braids twisted in a knot on top of her head. She wears a grey crop top with spaghetti straps and a massive cleavage, as well as brown shorts, all of which expose a bit too much extremely tanned flesh. Her saggy breasts almost fall out of the top; they are so long that you could tie them up in a knot, or braid them to match the hair, for that matter. Her midsection literally spills over the waistline of her shorts, and the obligatory tramp stamp isn't missing either; in her case, it's a flowery vine in faded green and red climbing the love handles all the way up to her arms. She sports dreamcatcher-earrings, and her long fingernails and toenails are painted golden.

The bloke has a pretty big frame and sizable gut, wears a green tank top and stone-washed jeans supported by a brown leather belt with an engraved silver buckle. He wears pointy black leather boots with heels, almost cowboy-style. His left upper arm is tattooed with, and it took me a while to figure out what the hell it is, a 90s-style pierced Indian biker skull, and his right arm with one of those Native American armbands with two feathers. The absolute best thing about him is his hairstyle, though, for he has the mullet to end all mullets, the mulletest mullet in the history of the world, the mullet that made it on the cover of the 'Encyclopedia of Mullets Yearbook 1537-2010'. He looks like he could have been the drummer or bass player of a short-lived Judas Priest-cover band in the 80s that never quite made it, as the singer had an excessive drinking problem and the rhythm guitar player was a junkie, and they disbanded after the producer of their first album ran away with the advance payment before a single tune was recorded and the singer subsequently drowned in his own vomit in the ensuing piss-up. The chick was probably his favourite groupie.

Lucky for us, they sit down for some tea, so we can take a closer look at them. I could kick myself for leaving the camera in our hotel room. I would have loved to take some sneaky shots for our and my precious readers' amusement. They're sitting there, enjoying the sun, constantly smiling, which is a welcome break from the usual cynical tourists (yes, that includes me, meh). Overhearing their conversation, we find they speak a very posh-sounding British English, so we conclude they must either be eccentric billionaires or unloved distant relatives of Prince Charles.

When one particular white car passes by, the dogs suddenly spring to life and start running next to the car, barking madly. One of them even tries to bite the door and the tyres. After about 20 seconds, they lose interest and trot back up the hill, lie down on the pavement and go back to sleep.

Our waiter is great, he treats all guests like royalty and makes a fuss over everyone. When he learns where I'm from he tells me he has a brother in Düsseldorf, like almost every other Turk I've met, and says a few rudimentary phrases in German. Needless to say, he brings us two more büyük çays on the house, and even presents J. with a flower, saying "Here, for you, lady, from my garden" while smiling broadly. When I ask him for the bill, he says "Money money money! No money, no honey!", making us laugh with his antics. We are determined to come back for breakfast.

We spend the rest of the day strolling along the harbour, checking out the boats and the pretty lighthouse, we sit down to have a beer at one of the many restaurants there, walk up to the castle but decide against paying the 12TL per person to enter, go to a Turkish sweets shop for some mahalabia (rice pudding), almond cookies, ayran and more cay, and finally eat a simple, yet delicious dinner of pasta with tomato sauce and grated halloumi.

There are lots of elderly British ladies strolling about in the harbour area, sitting in cafés drinking English tea with biscuits. I'm amazed and amused at how proper, polite and well-mannered they are, certainly a pleasant sight and a far cry from the usual tourist behaviour. Another strongly represented group are posh, young Russians, mostly females in pairs or threes. They sit in the harbour restaurants, smoking and drinking expensive cocktails, looking bored with each other and everything else, which goes to the extent that they can't even be fucked to look at their text messages anymore when the signal sounds.



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As promised, we return to the little café for breakfast. Our waiter happily serves us two amazing toasted sandwiches with tomatoes, cucumbers and halloumi. We wash it all down with fresh orange juice and çay, and after we finish the waiter brings us an orange and a grapefruit, "from my garden", he says, and they taste great, until we see that there are maggots in the grapefruit. After another büyük çay on the house, we thank him many times and are off.

We check out of our hotel, go rent a car and drive towards St. Hilarion Castle. St. Hilarion, together with Buffavento and Kantara, is one of the three castles in the Kyrenia Mountain Range that used to be of utmost importance to the Byzantines and later the Lusignans in the defence of the island against raids by Arab pirates.

As our car climbs up the mountain towards the castle, we pass a Turkish military base, heavily fortified and guarded by two soldiers to the left and the right of the gate. The soldiers are completely encased by olive-green sandbags stacked to form a wall around them. All we see of them is the upper part of their heads, and as we pass by slowly, they watch us suspiciously with narrowed eyes glaring from between the sandbags and their helmets. Further up, there's a monument commemorating the 1964 takeover of the castle by Turkish Cypriot activists, as well as the obligatory Atatürk-statue next to it.

The first glimpse we get of the castle completely takes my breath away. After a narrow bend, suddenly it appears, the dramatic structural remains growing out of the cliffside it was built upon, offset starkly against the blue of the sky. It blends in so neatly with the natural rock that one needs to look twice to believe it. However, the numerous signs warning us not to stop or take pictures deter me from doing precisely that, although there's no Turkish soldier in sight, but I'd rather not take a risk with an occupying force.

We pay the entrance fee and embark on the arduous climb to the peak. There are quite a few visitors wandering about and marvelling at the stunning views one gets of the surrounding mountain range and of Kyrenia and the Mediterranean Ocean. We do so as well, really taking our time to read the info panels about the history of the place. We visit the remains of a Byzantine church, royal appartement complexes, barrack rooms, cisterns that were used to store water, kitchens and butteries, Lusignan gates and Byzantine towers, and, not far from the peak, the infamous Prince John's tower, where Prince John of Antioch threw his loyal Bulgarian mercenaries to their deaths over the steep cliffs one by one, as the treacherous Queen Eleanor convinced him that they were secretly plotting against him.

What is most beautiful about the place, though, is the nature. There are colourful wildflowers, cypress and pine trees everywhere, and the scent of wild fennel and native herbs wafts through the air. When we finally reach the peak, we sit down on some rocks and just enjoy the incredible 360° vista, mountains on one side, the ocean on the other, a blue sky speckled with clouds looming above it all.

We linger around for a bit longer, then leisurely stroll back down towards the car park. Next stop: the outstanding Karpas Peninsula.

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Photos

Ferula communis
Giant fennel

Foeniculum vulgare
Wild fennel