Painted churches of the Troodos

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Today was going to be a long day. We planned to drive up to the Troodos massif and visit some of the World Heritage Byzantine painted churches. The painted churches were built at the time the Venetians controlled Cyprus. The Venetians were Roman Catholic but the locals still remained Eastern Orthodox, and they fled to the upper parts of the Troodos mountains where they built a series of 'hidden' churches. From the outside they look like barns or Swiss chalets, with sloping roofs for shedding snow. On the inside they are elaborately painted in Byzantine style biblical themes. There are many churches, but 10 of them have made it on the World Heritage list. They are pretty spread out, and you must hunt down the person who keeps the keys, so it is only possible to visit a few per day.

We left Limassol around 8 AM and started driving out and up the B8 road. Although the distance wasn't far, it was slow going as the road started getting twisty and turny as we climbed further and further up. We passed the towns of Troodos and Platres and Prodomos. The elevation here was over 5000 ft, and the views out over the valleys from Mt. Olympus were stunning. We soon came to the town of Moutoullas, where the church Panagia tou Moutoula is located. The keys were kept in the cafe on the main road, it took us some time to track them down. The church was located up a steep, narrow road and there were some other tourists waiting at the church for the keys when we arrived. The church itself was tiny, only a single inner room and an outer hall, but the interior was totally covered with elaborate paintings. We took a few photos before the keeper said not to although we weren't using the flash. The keeper didn't speak any English, and seemed rather surly. It is customary to tip the keeper a few Cyprus pounds for opening the church.

Next, we headed towards the next church nearby at Agios Ioannis Lampadistis near Pedhoulas. This is one of the larger and more impressively painted churches, and is usually open all day, but apparently today (Monday) they were closed. We also took the long way there in the car; we found out (too late) it is best to park in the town across the river and walk across the short bridge as the road to get to the church is some distance from town and involves backtracking quite a bit, driving to the church and back into town wasted a good half hour at least!

The Kykkos monastery was next on the list, it was still a good hour or so drive from Ioannis and we were quite hungry by the time we arrived. We grabbed lunch at the local cafeteria along with the busload of tourists before heading into the monastery itself. This is quite impressive place, still a functioning monastery that sees busloads of tourists arrive daily. The walls are covered with incredibly detailed mosaics of bible stories. The monks also brew their own beer and liquor here, which they sell in the gift shop.

We had missed one of the churches, Archangel Michael in Pedhoulas, and so headed back from Kykkos and were able to find the key owner without much trouble. We had a quick look in the church, the key owner here spoke English and was able to give us some more detailed info. We bought a few postcards and left as it was already past 2:30 by this point and we wanted to try making the next UNESCO site at Paphos before they closed at 4. I was also low on fuel and hadn't seen a petrol station at all since leaving Kykkos. We ended up on the back roads along the way to the coast, there wasn't much of anything. The road kept getting worse and worse too, most of it one-lane full of potholes, and some stretches were gravel. We finally started coming down out of the mountains into the valleys, and the road improved the rest of the way to the coast. We arrived at the Paphos site unfortunately just after they had closed; some other tourists arrived at the same time we did (others had just left) and were disappointed we were unable to see the ruins.

We started the drive back to Limmassol, planning on stopping at the temples of Kourion and Apollo Hylates along the way. The road along the coast is motorway all the way from Paphos to Agia Napa, the landscape is barren and bleached. One of the British Sovereign Base areas takes up a good chunk of the south coast in this part of Cyprus. We found the temples of Kourion after getting lost in some of the base suburbs, the road signs apparently directed us to an empty parking lot nowhere near the ruins! The Kourion ruins were well worthwhile, spread over a good sized area with some elaborate mosaics and public baths. Huge roof structures protected the more delicate mosaics from the elements. It was still quite warm even at 5:30 and we were pretty exhausted by this time and decided to head straight back to Limassol instead of going to Apollo Hylates ruins. This was our last night in Cyprus and to celebrate we found a great place for dinner in the old town of Limassol.

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