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Towards the exit of Yenirerenköy, we pick up a hitchhiker, an old, traditional-looking man with moustache and hat. He looks a bit confused first upon seeing who has stopped for him, but when he asks "Dipkarpaz?", and we nod assertively, he gets in anyway. He says he's a "Kurdi", and that he speaks "no English, Türkçe, Türkçe!". Upon hearing I'm from Almanya, he oohs and aahs a bit and says: "Deutschland gut! Arbeit! Arbeit!" which I find kind of ironic, for I have my fair share of troubles with work in my home country. Seeing that we can't keep on saying "tamam, tamam", "evet" and "teşekkür ederim", the conversation sort of stops after that. We offer him some of our roasted chickpeas, but he just takes the open packet, looks at it for a while, says something with "şeker", which I take to mean that he suffers from diabetes, and finally puts the whole pack in his bag. That wasn't exactly the point, but we don't mind, we didn't like them a whole lot anyway.
Most of the time we just talk to each other while he sits quietly in the back being a dignified old gentleman. We try to
Mosaics detail
Thongs were already quite popular back thenmake it clear that we talk about what we see along the road, pointing at generic-looking holiday homes, rustic cabins, old churches and potentially good restaurants, to show him that we're not talking about him and that we're taking an active interest in his home country. Sometimes he points to abandoned houses and says something in Turkish, but unfortunately I can only nod sheepishly and reply with the usual.
In Dipkarpaz, Rizokarpaso in Greek, we drop him off, smiling as he thanks us many times and walks away. The centre of Dipkarpaz features the usual gutted shell of a Greek Orthodox church, weathered by decades of forced neglect, and a new mosque right next to it. The obligatory equestrian statue of Atatürk, the Father of the Turks, isn't missing either. I wonder whether the Turkish Cypriots really care all that much about the founder of the modern Turkish state that they need a statue of him in the centre of every little shit village, and if they really hate their Greek Cypriot brethren so much that they want their churches looted and destroyed and sparkly new mosques built right next door just to see them defeated and humiliated. Seeing
that Turkey is so keen on shaping North Cyprus in its own image, I also wonder whether our Kurdish hitchhiker friend is being treated as second-class citizen here.
Dipkarpaz is home to the biggest Greek-speaking population in occupied North Cyprus. At 250 strong, these Greek Cypriots, now mainly elderly and supplied by UNFICYP, the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus, are tenaciously clinging on to life in their home despite the overwhelming odds that are stacked against them.
Some 5km north of Dipkarpaz, the Oasis at Ayfilon hotel overlooks a small bay and the rocky shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It is built right next to the shell of Agios Filon, a 12th-century church that was built over a 5th-century basilica. When we arrive, the restaurant is packed with people, their kids running noisily all over the place. A little fat girl in a pink outfit stares at us with open mouth, as we stand there trying to figure out desperately where the reception is. Finally the owner notices us, and shows us to our room.
First thing we do is put on our bathers and go to the beach in front of our room for a
Agios Filon church
12th-century church built over a 5th-century Christian basilica swim. However, the beach and the water are dirty and strewn with rubbish, and the prolific brown seaweed has piled up to huge mounts onshore. We decide to try somewhere else, and after a 10-minute walk, we find a nice and big white-sand beach, still littered, but not as bad as the other one, plus the water is cleaner. We jump in the shallow, lukewarm water and swim and bodysurf for a while. The only other people on the beach are a British family complete with two blond sons and dignified grandparents.
After a long day of driving, we take it easy that night, eating dinner in the hotel restaurant to see if it matches up to its good reputation. J. eats freshly caught fish, marinated in olive oil and grilled, whereas I go for the vegetable casserole, which ends up being very disappointing.
***
I get up at 6am and go for a run on a track along the North coast. The nature of this part of the Karpas Peninsula is wild and pristine, abounding in colourful wildflowers, shrubs and 'broccoli trees' that almost remind me of Rottnest Island. The air is
moderately hot and humid just after sunrise, and there's a gentle breeze wafting in from the sea. Were it not for the occasional fenced-in agricultural tract, one would get the impression that this part of the island has been untouched by humans for centuries. The odd ruined building standing in silent sentinel only adds to this feeling. The bubble bursts when the first tractor comes rattling around the bend, its operator waving at me cheerfully.
After a shower we eat a big breakfast consisting of tomatoes, cucumbers, bread grilled with tomatoes and halloumi, fried eggs, a big fruit salad and an endless supply of different teas. There's a posh British couple, or maybe it's a middle-aged guy with his old mother, I can't be sure about that, talking to a younger bloke from Sicily. They talk about the character of islands in the Mediterranean, and the lady states that Crete is much more Mediterranean than Cyprus. She goes on to say that Cyprus is more Arab in character, and the reason for that, according to her, is that the original inhabitants of Cyprus were Syrians, which is a gross oversimplification, to put it mildly.
We drive to Sipahi,
Ayia Trias in Greek, a little village close to Yenierenköy, to visit the ancient ruined Basilica of Agia Triada, Greek for Holy Trinity. The basilica dates from the 5th century, and sits rather inconspicuously in a field by the road side. There's an unoccupied small booth at the entrance, and when we enter, two boys come running out of the house on the other side of the street, and sit by the entrance to wait for us.
The main feat of the basilica are its intricately patterned abstract mosaics, fairly well-preserved compared to the main structure, of which little is remaining. When we walk towards the exit, one of the boys shyly hands us two A4-pages with some badly-translated information on the basilica's history while his smaller brother is hiding behind the ticket booth. I give him the entrance fee for two students, and he looks a bit confounded as a result.
On the way back to Dipkarpaz, we pass the €15 million-marina that is being built near Yenierenköy. Excavators and cranes are busy doing their work in the concrete-lined construction site filled with increasingly polluted sea water, where soon overly tan, flabby rich white-haired fucks will park
their million-$ yachts in the 500 berths available, hop on the convenient shuttle buses to the soon-to-be-built luxury resorts to indulge in the "full range of five-star services on offer".
On the Karpaz Bay Marina-website, it says that "The nearby village will offer a lovely contrast to the modern resort, creating an unforgettable experience for visitors. Every detail will be taken care of, leaving you free to enjoy the sea, the beaches and the beauty of the unspoilt landscape." I wonder how those villagers feel to be reduced to a freak spectacle for affluent Westerners wanting to get a break from their all-inclusive round-the-clock pampering and see the poor conditions those locals live in to make themselves feel superior. It's also more than ironic that the unique and beautiful Karpas Peninsula, this last relatively unspoilt part of Cyprus, will forever be changed by bulldozers and cement, to then be tainted by the influx of sybaritic, gluttonous boat imperialists, seeking infinite hyperabundant pleasures in an elusive "unspoilt landscape" that doesn't exist anymore thanks to their contribution.
***
Back in Dipkarpaz, we go to a little shop on the Turkish side of the main street,
buy a cold beverage and sit in the shade in front of the shop to watch the goings-on in the village. On the other side of the street is a Greek kafeneio and a restaurant serving food to the busloads of Greek Cypriot pilgrims who pass by on their way to the Monastery of Apostolos Andreas, a site where miracles reputedly take place. It was only in 2003, when then-leader of the Turkish Cypriots Rauf Denktaş made the announcement that the Green Line would open that day for all Cypriots, that it became possible for Greek Cypriots to resume their pilgrimages to the monastery. Now that the Green Line is always open, there's a constant flow of mostly elderly believers making their way to the Easternmost tip of the Karpas, where the monastery is located.
We chat to the young man taking care of the shop, who says he's from Famagusta. I ask him how it works here, do Greek and Turkish Cypriots get along? If you listened to what he said, you would think there's no problem at all in Cyprus. He just says yeah, everything's fine, no trouble here. When we finish our drink, he orders two
çay for us from the nearby Turkish café. First we refuse that he pay, but he's insistent, so we cave in and let him treat us. He puts up an empty Efes beer crate as a table for us to put the tea on. When there's a customer, he goes back to the shop, cashes in, then comes back to chat some more.
Suddenly, the Kurdish man whom we gave a lift the day before shows up, smiling and waving, happy to see us. We get up to shake his hand and he uses the supermarket guy as an interpreter to thank us many times and to bless us in the name of Allah. We say it was our pleasure, no need to mention it. He holds up his hands, palms facing upwards, and says he wants to take us to the Turkish café as an expression of his gratitude, but we politely refuse, saying we're already having some tea, he shouldn't worry about it. He thanks us again, shakes our hands, and hobbles off into the distance.
A little boy walks up towards the shop guy to deliver his lunch in a plastic container, all the while
Church of the Holy Trinity
One of two remaining Greek Orthodox churches in Rizokarpaso/Dipkarpaz eyeing us suspiciously. When the boy is gone, he sits next to us, opens the bag, puts the food on the makeshift table and says that he wants to share his food with us. We are very surprised by this heartfelt generosity delivered with the most innocent smile, just because you rarely get something to that effect these days, and politely decline his offer, as we don't want to feed on his lunch. It's chicken with pickles and fries and a big mixed salad on a separate plate. We tell him we're vegetarian, but he says we can eat the salad, but we say no thank you, it's ok, we'll go to the restaurant vis-à-vis. We'd been eyeing that one for a while anyway, so we thank him many times, wish him a good appetite, tell him we'd see him later, and walk off, hoping we didn't offend him.
We sit down inside the restaurant at a long table, as there's no free tables outside. Some Greek Cypriots join us at the table soon and stare at us in a weird manner. Especially a woman of indeterminable age, who walks in with a fat, older man, doesn't seem to
like us a whole lot. I ask myself when the last time was that she had a look into the mirror, as she's an extremely drawn and haggard-looking figure with bad make-up that only unsatisfactorily hides her beat-up face. She seriously looks like a junkie who's been battered by her dealer. She says something about us to her fat guy, who just nods dully, and they keep staring unhumorously.
There's a younger Brit couple vacating their outside table, so we quickly escape from this bad company and sit down outside. We eat a big plate of chips and mixed salads, waving to our friend from the opposite supermarket. For once, the chips are just right, unlike the many other times they were undercooked inside, and the salad is plentiful. There's even a little plate with hummus on the side, and half a loaf of sliced bread.
Afterwards we go to the Greek kafeneio to make it clear to the village that we don't discriminate against anybody and that we don't have favourites. And to drink a strong Cyprus coffee, of course. Curiously, our waitress turns out to be a big Sri Lankan chick, and seems to be starved
Equestrian statue of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the 'Father of Turks'
These statues are everywhere in North Cyprus; mostly they were erected in close proximity to the Greek Orthodox churches, which have fallen into disuse following the Turkish Invasion of 1974 and the ensuing ethnic cleansing of the Greek Cypriot population for a decent conversation. We chat to her for a bit, naturally the topic of the Sri Lankan Civil War comes up quickly, and she concludes that Sri Lankans and Tamils don't mix, which surprises me a bit. Usually with people from countries where tensions between different ethnic groups exist, it always seems that they don't like the other ethnicities, but wouldn't admit it to an outsider, and would say they have friends of all ethnic backgrounds, or at least pretend to do so. But she just blatantly states she doesn't think highly of Tamils and wouldn't socialize with them. At least it's honest. Our friend from the supermarket sees us sitting in the kafeneio and waves at us. We wave back at him.
When we walk towards the car, we pass the restaurant again, whose owner is sitting on the porch now, drinking a coffee, happy with the good business he's made that day. When he sees us he smiles and says "Come! Drink coffee!", which we can't possibly refuse, but ask if he has çay instead. As we sit there, drinking our tea, a new busload of Greek worshippers arrives. We are a bit taken aback that
Agios Synesios church with minaret in the background
Not only are the Greek Orthodox churches of North Cyprus slowly falling into ruin from forced neglect and disuse, new mosques are being built right next to them to add insult to injury many of the middle-aged and elderly women wear rather racy outfits. Stockings, high heels and tank tops abound, and I ask myself whether they're even allowed into the monastery like this. One small, crookbacked old lady wears a red dress, a pink headscarf, pink stockings and goes over to the supermarket to buy herself a twister icy pole, which she licks greedily.
There are several ancient people, most notably a lady bent over almost at a 90°-angle, who walks on the bus with the others, supported by a cane. Another elderly lady shuffles slowly down the two stairs that lead down from the restaurant to the bus, trips and just falls down flat on her head. First everybody is in shock, and the owner of the restaurant, the bus driver and some others quickly rush towards her to pick her up. She seems to be hurt and starts weeping, but shortly afterwards, all the other old ladies burst into laughter, while we sit there in disbelief at what we're witnessing.
The fallen lady is just standing next to the bus, pressing a tissue on the wound on her head, looking hurt and miserable, and they really seem to
make fun of her in a malicious and disgusting way. One middle-aged lady in particular is outstandingly mean and devoid of all class. She's wearing a singlet with cross-straps in the back, a red top with a big silver butterfly print, an equally red scarf, black 7/8ths tights, lots of rings and dangly earrings, her lips painted bright red and her voluminous butt and breasts a stark contrast to her spindly legs, stands there holding her hand in front of her mouth, only barely restraining her laughter, all the while looking like a cheap old prostitute on her way to the monastery to pray for miracles. Yet another example of the outrageous hypocrisy of religious zealots, who think they're so sacred and deserve preferential treatment from their bearded old man in the sky, while at the same time confusing modesty with tackiness and commiseration with schadenfreude.
***
Our next stop is Golden Beach, Cyprus' top beach, according to our guidebook. To get there, we have to drive further up the panhandle, or, as it looks to me, the violin neck that is the Karpas. The scenery on the way there is amazing, with gently
rolling hills, golden fields, garrigue and maquis shrubs on one side, and rocky cliffs soaring out of the sea on the other. Golden Beach itself is not bad indeed, but far from the pristine beach we were imagining. Any beach in Australia is cleaner than this. It may not be as bad as at our hotel beach, but there'S still the little broken plastic pellets strewn everywhere. The local authorities really should make an effort to keep the beaches clean, at the very least the one that's the major tourist drawcard.
The water is clear and chilly, and quite shallow, you can walk pretty far into the sea and still be able to touch the ground with your feet. As we're not ones to linger around on the beach all day, we only stay for a while, then move on to Cape Apostolos Andreas, the easternmost tip of Cyprus. On the way we see some feral donkeys roaming about, a few of them walking up to the cars to beg for food. The last 5km is on a very stony and bumpy track that our Polo might really not be cut out for. When we behold the sea to
the left and the right, it feels like we're heading out to the end of the earth. At the end, however, there's some Turks having a barbecue, scattered couples sitting on the rocks, and an abandoned meteorological customs hut. There's a small hill with massive Turkish and TRNC flags flying on its summit, to remind you where you are.
In front of the bulbous rocky outcrop jutting out into the sea, there's a string of little islets. Hard to imagine that there's Syria and the extreme South of Turkey on the other side, only about 120km from the tip of the island.
On the top of the hill, the views are great, and two Turkish blokes have realized this as well, but are now busy taking badly posed pictures of each other with the flags in the background. They must be such proud Turks. I better not say anything critical of Atatürk, or use the words 'Armenian' and 'genocide' together in one sentence, if I want to get out of here in one piece.
On the way back, we stop at the Monastery of Apostolos Andreas, which is already shut, but nice to look at from the
outside, as well. It is constructed in a similar manner to Rila Monastery in Bulgaria, standing on a large open courtyard, with the ground-level of the elongated building open and beautifully arched, and the upper floor presumably serving as quarters for monks and pilgrims.
As one could have anticipated, just in front of the monastery, the Turks erected a monument commemorating the 1974 Turkish Army Invasion of Cyprus, known in Turkey as the 'Cyprus Peace Operation'. The same old flags are flying to the sides of the monument. The Monastery of Apostolos Andreas is something like the Lourdes for Greek Cypriots, yet the Turks just couldn't resist adding insult to injury, showing them whose dick is bigger and virtually tell them "nenenenene, it's ours now", like spoiled little brats. This childish pettiness disguised as national pride is both preposterous and infuriating, its ugly face tainting the Karpas almost everywhere you tread.
For dinner, we return to Dipkarpaz and find a nice little family restaurant with a cosy atmosphere. There's a big group of Germans sitting on a long table. I usually wouldn't mind, but it turns out that they are teachers, and there's nothing worse than a German
Basilica of Agia Triada ruins
Dating from th 5th century AD teacher, except a group of them in a foreign country. One of them dominates the conversation in a very obnoxious manner and penetrates everbody's eardrums with his awful Saxon dialect. He acts according to the dictum that when you're full of shit, you better make up for it by speaking louder than everybody else. He craps on about the differences in German and Bavarian grammar usage, presenting the obvious like something that only he is smart enough to realize. He actually goes on to say that Turkish and Arabic are essentially the same languages, just that Turkish is written in Latin characters, and that the pronunciations are almost the same as well, which, if anybody still required it, serves as the ultimate proof that this person is incredibly and stunningly full of bullshit. When the waiter brings them more plates of food, he says "Now would you look at these potatoes, these are really nice potatoes", which becomes something like his catch phrase, as he keeps repeating it over and over again.
J. eats octopus and I contend myself with five plates of meze, which include cacik (tzatziki), patlican (aubergine), potatoes with tomatoes, sigara böreği (a pastry parcel in
cigar form filled with spinach and cheese), and grilled halloumi. It's all delicious, and comes with a simple salad on the side. It's so good that I'm even able to ignore the potato-heads on the other table.
***
After a day of full-on madness and too many impressions to process in such a short time, we take it easy the following day. We visit the nearby ruins of Afendrika in the early morning, which are very scattered on an extensive site and consist of three churches, a citadel and a necropolis. In the 2nd century BC, Afendrika was one of the six great cities of Cyprus, although looking at it, it's hard to imagine, given how neglected and random the whole affair appears, though atmospheric it surely is. The real sight is the nature on display here, with the overwhelming, soothing silence only interrupted by sporadic birdsong.
For lunch, we go to a kebab shop in Dipkarpaz, whose owner doesn't speak a word of English, so we just point to the pide and say 'halloumi', and it works out, he brings us two delicious halloumi pide, which are almost like a very thin,
crispy Turkish version of pizza. They come with a mountain of parsley, some lemon, peppers and tomatoes on the side. When it comes to paying, though, an unpleasant surprise awaits us. The guy asks his wife how much to charge us, and she tells him to charge 18TL, which I'm shocked to read on the piece of paper he scribbles it on. I expected something like 8-10TL, seeing that the dish was quite small and simple, and the eatery is nothing fancy. I grudgingly pay, angry that we let our guard down and didn't ask the price beforehand. Sometimes, when sailing is a little too smooth while travelling, something like this happens and brings you back down to earth.
In the afternoon, we go to the beach close to our hotel and sit down on two deckchairs, seeing that we're the only ones there. Only seconds later, a guy shows up from somewhere and says "10 Lira", which prompts me to laugh at him, so he just turns around and walks away. Not sure if he was the official caretaker, but the deckchairs were dirty anyway, so if he wants to charge such a ridiculous amount, he better take
€15 million-Karpaz Gate Marina being built near Yialousa/Yenierenköy
The beginning of the end of pristine wildlife in the Karpas Peninsula; but who needs rare species of birds and beautiful wild flowers when they can have private locust investors and rich fucks on their million-$ luxury yachts? proper care of them so he has something to back up his claim. We go to sit in the sand and read for a bit until the wind picks up and it gets too cold to stay, so we return to our hotel.
We go to the same place as the day before for dinner, but this time order a 'vagetable' dish, which turns out to be potatoes cooked with spicy tomatoes, capsicum, some celery and parsley. We get the same five meze to go with it again, and they're as great as the other day. After we finish up and pay, the owner comes and asks whether we would like a coffee on the house, we ask if he has çay as well, and he brings us some good-quality ceylon. He asks if he can sit down at our table, and we reply yes, of course. He introduces himself as Şükrü, and has problems pronouncing my name, he says it sounds like the Japanese money.
He tells us his parents came from Adana in Turkey in '74, and that he's owned the restaurant for five years now. We ask if his wife co-owns it, he says yes,
but she's not here today, as she's pregnant. He says he's never been to Turkey, never even been anywhere else than the Karpas Peninsula, that it's his home and he can't imagine living in a different place. In a way, that gives us a different perspective on the Turkish settlers who were sent over, given land, houses and Cypriot citizenship to change the demographic of the North. His parents were two of them, but what about him? He was born here, lived here all his life.
Of course, it was a crime against humanity that Greek Cypriots were driven out of their homes in the North, which were given to mainland Turks in many cases. Of course, in the ideal case, the Turkish settlers would be sent back to Turkey once the island reunifies, if it reunifies, and the original inhabitants would return, but is it really fair on people like him to be sent back to Turkey? He's never even been there. He's not the nationalistic, patronizing Turk we had in mind, he's intelligent and soft-spoken, has an athletic and wiry frame instead of a potbelly and a moustache, and is a polite and pleasant conversationalist. He doesn't
seem to harbour a grudge against Greeks, Kurds or Armenians, what he cares about in the first place is his family and his business. What worries and alarms him is the increasing commercialization of the Karpas and the building of the marina near Yenierenköy, and he hates that the beaches are littered.
"I told the mayor to clean it up, even offered to help myself, but so far, nothing has happened. In summer, there's one day when schoolkids go out to clean up the beaches, but even then two weeks later it looks the same as before."
-"But where does all the rubbish come from? Is it from ferries between Turkey and here?"
"No, it comes floating over from Syria. Every boat that leaves the Syrian shore dumps all their rubbish into the sea, so they don't have to pay the fee for it ashore, and it all ends up on our beaches. But it's also the locals, when they go on a picnic, they just dump and leave their waste. There's no ecological conscience."
-"But why is that?"
"Education."
When we finish our tea, he shouts me a glass of red wine, and J. a fruit punch.
We chat for a bit longer, until he has to attend to other customers, so we thank him for his hospitality and generosity, and return to the hotel with mixed feelings.
***
The hotel breakfast is as good as always, and this morning we get a strange orange fruit that seems to consist mostly of seeds and very little succulent, tangy flesh. We ask the lady who serves us breakfast what the name is, and she says it's called 'yeni dünya', which could potentially translate to 'new quince', but later we look it up and find out it's actually a loquat.
Afterwards we drive to Büyükkonuk, formerly known as Komi Kebir, Cyprus' first eco-village. Driving through it, one wouldn't necessarily realize that it's an eco-village, although it is cleaner and the buildings are better-kept than in other villages in the area. The project started in 2006 and saw €1.8 million in funds flooding in from USAID, the UN and Turkey, which were used to start sustainable development and agrotourism, renovate a number of traditional buildings, and teach the 800 residents about living an eco-friendly lifestyle.
We visit the Old Olive Mill, restored
in 2007 and well-hidden in a lush garden. Inside, there's an old olive press and an even older olive mill, with numerous info signs giving detailed explanations on their use. The traditional olive oil production-method involved three steps: first the olives were crushed in the olive mill, whose millstone was turned by a donkey slowly circling the basin; the olives were then scooped out and pressed in the olive press; the final step was to separate the liquids through decantation. In some parts of Cyprus, olive oil is still extracted this way, and traditionalists will tell you it is the only method that ensures supreme quality and taste.
We walk on to a craft shop owned and operated by Lois and Ismail, a Canadian-Turkish Cypriot couple. Lois comes out of their adjacent home to greet us. She's in her early grandma years, already a bit wrinkly and grey, but very vital and happy-looking. When she hears that J. is from Perth she tells us she lived there for 10 years until 1986, when she moved to North Cyprus with her husband, whom she met in Australia. She says her kids live in Scotland, Nicosia and London, and she herself
grew up in India. We ask what the kids' citizenship is.
"Well, one of my boys has Canadian citizenship now, but before he was only Cypriot, so he had to do the military service here. He did one year and then paid £4000 to get out, they give you that option. He really hated it. The drill is very hard, they humiliate you, steal your things, wake you up in the middle of the night, indoctrinate and brainwash you using all possible means. The border guards in Lefkoşa used to be told that they can get out of their military service if they shoot a Greek on the other side. Can you imagine?"
We want to know what it's like to live in Büyükkonuk.
"It's better now. Before '74, there were three doctors in the village, there was a police station, a tailor, people were living in double-storey houses. Everybody was affluent and happy. After the Turkish Invasion, that all changed, the village started from zero. There was nothing here, nothing. 200,000 Greek Cypriots were leaving North Cyprus, they were driven out of their homes. They were put into social security housing in the South, when before
they had big houses, they owned land, livestock. There's a lot of bitterness there, as you can probably imagine.
Now it's mostly mainland Turks living here. More than half of the North's inhabitants are from Turkey. They are poor farmers from Anatolia. They get free houses, land and tractors to till the land."
We chat to her for a bit more, getting some invaluable insights into life in Cyprus, and then look around the shop, where some nice souvenirs and knick-knacks are on display, all hand-made by her husband, who is a carpenter, and herself.
Afterwards we drive to the North Coast to take the steep, winding road inland up to Kantara Castle. As we approach the summit of the ridge, we can already see the castle beckoning from above. We pay the small entrance fee, and hike up the steep path towards the castle. There are thousands of annoying, little bugs in the air. They are extremely atrocious and hard to escape. We continuously have to flick them off our shirts, arms and heads. One of them lands on my neck and bites, prompting me to let out a scream, as it hurts like a motherfucker.
The castle itself is badly-signposted and not as interesting as St. Hilarion, and we never quite know where the hell we are. The map we got doesn't help a lot, either. All we do is trying to dodge the tenacious bugs and at the same time enjoy the magnificent views. One can behold the sea on both sides and the whole of the Karpas Peninsula extending towards the horizon. We catch a glimpse of some of the biggest lizards we've seen on the island so far. There are beautifully marked butterflies, colourful wildflowers, the ubiquitous wild fennel and only a few other visitors. The sun is burning like no tomorrow, so we seek shelter inside the cool ruined buildings whenever we can.
When we drive back into Dipkarpaz, I race around the bend before the village centre way too fast, and I'm quite shocked to see that after the curve, there's a whole bunch of people crowded in front of the Atatürk statue, where a man in a suit is standing on a podium. They all look at us as I put on the brakes so as not to hit the policeman in front of us, who motions for
me to drive to the right, but I just drive around him, but then there's a second policeman motioning for me to go left, so I stop and ask what's going on. He doesn't speak English, though, so I tell him we want to go to Oasis Hotel, and he points out a detour for me. I feel a bit bad to have interrupted their little celebration so rudely.
Back at Ayfilon, we go for a last swim at the beach close to our hotel. To our surprise, somebody has raked up a lot of the rubbish into piles. We see two guys actually burning the piles on the beach, and recognize one of them as the one who asked us to pay for the deckchairs. He ignores us peevedly.
For dinner, we give our hotel restaurant another go, and this time we're not disappointed. J. eats garlicky prawns and I get spaghetti with a nice veggie sauce and grated halloumi on top. We have a big salad with extra feta and halloumi on the side, and I told Hatice, the owner's wife, to really bring on the cheese, and she doesn't even charge extra, as I think
she must have taken a liking to me.
***
The following morning, we pack up, eat our last yummy, extensive breakfast and drive back to Kyrenia. Thus ends our stay in the stunning Karpas Peninsula, whose natural beauty and genuinely hospitable people we have really grown to like during the last five days. All I wonder is that if I ever was to come back, will I still find the relatively unspoilt, wild landscapes, or will it all be replaced by concrete, tarmac and even more rubbish than now?
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
We've always wanted to go to Cyprus.
Loved the blog! Loved the trees bent by the wind. We always like to take pictures of those kinds of trees. Thanks for all the history.