No, seriously it’s moving. I was first struck by the cracks in the walls of my AirBnB which was build into the side of a hill, in 20th Century America, we would say it had a walkout basement. Cyprus is old and this house, as most houses in Cyprus doesn’t fit easily into the common architectural phylotypes of the West. This house was old. The owner didn’t know how old, only that her parents had purchased it for 9,000 pounds in 1978.
As I drove through the mountains, there were rocks in the road from recent landslides around every corner. In some places the road was partially caved in, in others longitudinal cracks had formed in the pavement as the road separated in preparation to cave. My AirBnB host told me that a home she had purchased and later resold required substantial foundation repairs. It looked like most of the buildings on the island had foundation problems.
Prior to going to Cyprus, I had fantasies that I might fall in love with it and Tanya might fall in love with it and we would end up retiring there. It’s a relatively inexpensive place to live as far as islands in the Eurozone go, though that’s changing. The landscape reminds me of Arizona in that it’s arid and mountainous, except for an area of pine forests (think Flagstaff). Unlike Arizona, it also has stunning coastlines and beaches. It also has a splash of Hawaii, in that it has a native people that seem to be looked down upon by immigrants and conquerors and an influx of new people coming in and buying up prime real estate and building luxury condominiums. In the case of Cyprus, the current crop of outsiders is primarily Russian. And of course, like the British (former colonizers), they drive on the left. And also like Arizona, they have subpar public transportation.
These last two points are the main reasons that I am not itching to go back — there is not safe, reliable way for me to get around the island. I hated driving on the left. Driving on the right is not inherently better, but if it’s all you have done for forty years, the change is daunting. The world is just simply a better place when I am not trying to drive on the left. So, I don’t want to visit countries that drive on the left and lack adequate public transit so that I feel like I should risk driving. To make a long story short, within a couple of hours of renting the car, I went through some sort of skinny tunnel and cut the corner short on the passenger side and bashed in the front, left door and also broke a tie rod and damaged a tire. This lead to some hostilities with the rental agency, but let’s put all that behind us because it’s really not an interesting story.
What was interesting was that the British woman who rented an AirBnB to me gave me impossibly bad directions. This led to wrong turns, the tunnel, etc. I stopped at the house where the Google Maps led me to and asked. An old man came to the door in camos. I tried to communicate that I was looking for an AirBnB and showed him a picture of my host, thinking maybe he would recognize her (the AirBnB was in a small community outside of Paphos). He didn’t, but he invited me in to try some of his homemade hooch, Ouzo, I think. He also gave me some candy that is pretty typical throughout the caucuses, balkans and Turkey. I don’t know what it’s called, but they cook down grapes with nuts. Sometimes they run a string down the middle and it comes out looking like a candle. Personally, it’s not my favorite. After a couple of drinks, he showed me where he thought I wanted to go, but he was wrong and I had to resort to calling the host and she guided me in.
So, what is there to do in Cyprus? First, there are beautiful beaches. I’m not really a beach person, so I walk around a little, look at stuff ,and stay away from the water. If I ever develop into a beach person, I’m sure these will be some of my favorites. They already are some of my favorites, it’s just that I don’t really like sand and I don’t swim that much either.
There are also quite a few ancient churches and monasteries. These are mostly in or near small villages up in the mountains. Some of these are quite difficult to get to in a regular car as the roads go from asphalt to gravel to dirt.
Aside from that, there’s Nicosia which is the capital city. It is the only divided capital city in the world. The division is the result of war in which Turkey invaded in the 1970s and established the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus on about 40% of the island. The division runs throw Nicosia. It is possible to enter North Cyprus via land crossing points. This is kind of an interesting thing to do. The border zone around the checkpoint in Nicosia is rather built up and commercial on each side of the border. Once out of that zone, particularly on the north side, development drops off pretty fast. The Selimiye Mosque was the most interesting thing I saw in my visit to the North Cyprus. It began as a Catholic Church in the Byzantine Empire when Cyprus was taken over by Selimiye the Magnificent. It was then converted to a mosque. You can’t drive to North Cyprus, so you’re somewhat limited on what you can do in the country without arranging for transportation. I stayed near the border crossing and was only there a few hours.
So, in summary, if you like beaches, Cyprus has some beautiful beaches. I would recommend staying at one of the resorts to avoid driving. There are several tour companies on the island that can get you out to see some of the sites, I just don’t think the risk of driving justifies any of the sites that I saw.