In addition there is endless sightseeing available around the extensive archaeological sites on Cyprus.
Our Cyprus Travel, Holiday and Walking Guides and Photos
are based around our 2 weeks holiday in Cyprus during mid September 2005 having got ourselves a
reasonably good late deal for a self catering apartment near
Paphos - not always easy to find as most Cyprus holiday accommodation seems to be
hotels. We always prefer self-catering - for a start it's cheaper than
using hotels and since we are always out all day hiking etc. we do not
need/require lots of facilities - and secondly you get a fridge and can thus
have the very necessary iced water/drinks to take walking.This page covers general things we found about Cyprus including eating and transport and so on as well as various places we visited in the Paphos area - our specific pages about walking in Cyprus with descriptions, stuff about the archaeological sites and Cyprus beach photographs can be picked from the menus further down this page. |
As always with us our holidays are about getting as much walking in as possible and taking lots of photos whilst
doing so but we do like a little bit of sightseeing as well and it's easy
to spend hours around some of Cyprus's Archaeoligical sites -
the sites
around around the Pafos area are excellent. We enjoy visiting beaches and coves particularly which are a little remote
- and because of the effort to get to them often deserted - and are not covered with chairs and things -
i.e. more on the wild side where you can strip off and enjoy some nude
swimming and sunbathing if you want. There are plenty
of naturist freindly beaches to be found on Cyprus if you care to look. We have a separate page
showing some of the beaches around Paphos and Akamas in particular.
Please note there are no nudist photographs etc. on our web sites.
Below and on our separate walks and beaches pages we hope to provide some information about Cyprus and what we did and found there. Cyprus is of course a large island so in no way could we cover very much of it - our hiking instructions/ideas info mostly concern walks we did around Paphos, Coral Bay, Polis, Lara, Latsi, Akamas and around the brilliant Troodos mountains.
Paphos. Paphos is one of Cyprus's major holiday resorts and has it's own airport which is located a few kms's to the south of the town - so for anyone holidaying in the area the first good thing is that transfers are pretty fast. Mid-September is still within the main part of the tourist season so Paphos is pretty busy and also prices for just about everything are not at their best from a visitor's point of view. There are lots of restaurants in and around the front as well as quite a few "leather" and other touristy type shops, banks and also a few supermarkets. There are also plenty of bars and a more dedicated "noisy" area which is full of very loud music bars all trying to outdo each other to produce even louder music.
A bus service runs between the Port area and Coral Bay and is pretty
good - with no.10 and no.15 services running around every 15 minutes both
ways right up to the last bus at 11pm (the bus fare was a flat 70 cents).
There are also lots of taxis to be had - as usual agreeing a price before
using one is essential - the price seemed to be around one Cyprus pound
(or September 2005 exchange rate 1.20 UK Pounds) per kilometre.
Car hire is not cheap here - with full insurance
we had to pay 30 Cyprus pounds per day for an Astra.
The "harbour-front" restaurants we found to be a little more expensive
than if you wandered back a few streets but overall wherever we ate the
food was nicely cooked and there was quite a lot of it. We did think the
food to be a little expensive in Paphos with meals averaging around 7.50
Cyprus Pounds for a main course and starters and puddings around 2 to 3
pounds. Did not find the wine to be that brilliant - apparently Cyprus
wine is best in the Spring so we were told at one restaurant - local wine
being around 7 pounds a bottle (75cl). We ended up using 4 different
places to eat - one Italian, one Indian and two "Taverna type" ones which
were of course Greek owned and run.
There is a huge archaelogical site which you enter near the Fort which
we found to be really interesting - lots of mosaics and Roman houses
and baths etc. but if the weather is warm remember to take a hat and a
bottle of water - also another site called the Tombs of the Kings is on
the edge of the Town - this has extensive rock cut burial chambers to look
at. photos from the site can be found here
Pafos coastline up to Cape Drepano including Coral
Bay. A main road goes right along the coast as far as Cape
Drepano - this road is incredibly busy with loads of buses, coaches,
taxis, lorries and cement mixers as well as cars using it from early
morning to late at night (well not the lorries late at night of
course). The reason for the heavy traffic is the incredible amount of
building going on right along the coast - every spare bit of ground seems
to have houses and villas being built on it and we have never seen to many
road-side bill-boards advertising these houses as here. Coupled to this
there are quite a lot of hotels along the coast too.
Near the Archaeological Site is the Pafos Municipal beach which is sandy,
and there are various rocky coves along the coast - just as the road nears
Coral Bay there is a longish mostly pebble beach and then Coral Bay's main
beaches a bit further on. The main road ends at Cape Drepano where there
are several bits of beach as well as a nice church.
Cape Drepano up to Lara and then up a bit more.
Just before getting to Cape Drepano/Agios Georgios a road goes off on the
right - this is a tarmac but smaller road which eventually becomes an
unmade road as it heads past the Avakas Gorge entrance and on to Lara
Turtle beach and then further up the Akamas Peninsular.
This is a favourite place for 4WD folk to play - the track is full of sometimes
quite big potholes especially at the start and as far as the Lara beach
Taverna turnoff. However you do not need a 4WD - we went quite happily
right up to Kannoudia Islet using our Astra - you just have to drive
slowly and not wreck the underneath on the potholes.
This is a favourite place for 4WD folk to play - the track is full of
sometimes quite big potholes especially at the start and as far as the
Lara beach Taverna turnoff. However you do not need a 4WD - we went
quite happily right up to Kannoudia Islet using our Astra - you just
have to drive slowly and not wreck the underneath on the potholes.
There is another really nice sandy beach just after Lara beach and then various pebble beaches to be found as you continue along. On maps the track is shown as ending by Kannoudia Islet but in fact it does continue on along the coast - there is also a track junction near here which takes you across the Peninsular to Loutra - we have walked this area and don't think it is at all possible in a car and some bits would be iffy even in a good 4WD unless you are experienced driving such - very rocky and very slippery/steep scree descents/ascents etc. even the goats were being careful in places....
Loutra, Latsi (Lakki), Polis and Pomos. Loutra is the
location of another Aphrodite type site of interest - this time
it's her bath apparently. Lots of people come here to see this - we were there
primarily to do a couple of walks into the Akamas hills and to walk up to
the end of the island at Cape Akamas. There are several trails which start
from Loutra and because of Ms. Aphrodite there is a restaurant and a large
car park available. In addition there is a quite large camp site quite
near the Bath.
Between Loutra and Latsi there is again plenty of Villa building going on - Latsi itself has several restaurants and two reasonably sized supermarkets by the roadside - the beach is also quite extensive and has sun-chairs and things available for hire We decided to continue along the coast to Pachyammos and have a look at the Turkish border guards - first place of note to go through is Polis - yet another place with villa new-builds in full swing - then we followed the coast on up to Pomos and finally to Pachyammos - the road goes right alongside the coast and borders an almost continuous pebble beach - with hardly a soul on it.
Kato Platres, Troodos, Mount Olympus, Mon. Trooditissa.
We do not know much about Platres, we just went via it to get up to
Troodos for our walks. It does appear to have a lot of accommodation in
the shape of chalets to cater for the ski season - we talked to some
people we met whilst walking in the area who were staying in Plates and
they said the place was dead during the evenings. I know that of the 3
times we drove through around 9 a.m. there were already lots of coaches
and cars around with tourists meandering about looking at something or
other (in the middle of the road of course), and that on our way back
around 6 p.m. there was hardly a soul to be seen.
Moni Trooditissa is probably a really lovely monastery - sadly
they don't seem to like anyone other than Greek Cypriots as is made quite
clear from the red worded posters on the entrance gates saying anyone else can
bog off - this was quite disappointing particularly to my wife who likes
looking at monasteries and churches but accepts that perhaps sometimes you cannot go
completely inside an actual monastery. At Trooditissa you cannot even look at the
building apart from the walls going alongside the road on one side - there
is however a
nice walk
which starts from here so all was not lost.
Mount Olympus is simply reached by walking up a road (or driving
up it of course) - we went up to the top as
part of a nice walk and hikers
do need to get to highest points if possible - height we measured
on our GPS was 1947 metres. We had an ice cream and then a chat with the
soldier guarding the military site and that was about it - the views are
pretty good from the top though. Guess Cyprus must boast one of the
highest golf tees in the Med. - presumably the round white object was a
super golf ball? woops not meant to mention it of course... and we
certainly did not take a photo whilst up there. However my wife did get a
nice shot of it from further round our walk.
Troodos Village - well it was quite a mess when we visited - we had gone there since one of walks started from the car park. There were several stalls flogging something or other and loads of lorries and bull-dozers and tarmac and stuff all over the place - it does look as if some money has been allocated and the place is being tarted up - does sort of need it. There is a large car park available on the other side of the place and this is also where several walker's trails start - just before getting to the village there is also a large Visitors Centre and car park.
Several other places visited - Pissouri Bay, Akrotiri's beaches and Episkopi (Kurio, Apollo Tempel and Kolossi). Pissouri is located about half way between Pafos and Limassol - as you travel down to the beach the whole area seems to be covered in newly built or being built villas - every inch of it. Down by the sea there is a reasonably sized car park but this is used of course by the beach people so parking spaces are not easily found.
On the road from Pissouri to Episkopi can be found the Apollo Tempel and further along the Kurio - the latter is very interesting to walk round. On the other side of Episkopi is the Kolossi - this again is worth a visit - you can walk inside and go up to the top of this massively thick walled building and there are also other bits being excavated in the compound.
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