Cyprus: Making the Most of 60 Hours

What can you fit into 60 hours? In 2 days and 3 nights in Cyprus, we swam with lorries, buried the car and then nearly drowned it, earned a diving certification, ran out of money, and stuck a hundred prickles into our tongues. “Come on, closer—you can squeeze through. There, by the axle behind the wheel—pull it out!” The sun is blazing, our fingernails and elbows are being ground away against the stones, sweat is trickling down our foreheads, and our cheeks and shoulders are smeared with engine oil... Despair slithers into the heart like a treacherous snake and paints a picture: we are hitchhiking by the roadside, a recovery truck is digging the car out of a heap of stones, the jeep’s owner is shouting something untranslatable... and then we go straight to the airport. Faced with a forecast like that, you dash into the sea to cool off and then dig with three times the strength... And yet, just a day and a half earlier, I had been blissfully writing in my diary: Aphrodite was very lucky in her day: she was a goddess. Therefore, she could choose where she wanted to be born. And she chose Cyprus. Here, the tiled roofs of sand-coloured houses peek out from behind curly trees, while lanes climb the coastal cliffs or descend towards the turquoise water. The scents of the sea and tropical greenery hang in the air, along with an indestructible spirit of antiquity that even the din of modern residential districts cannot drown out. The island melts languidly into the sparkling turquoise. Just as they did 300 years ago, lacemakers make lace, winegrowers tend their vines, and fishermen put to sea. The 60 hours in Cyprus were a birthday present for my husband from our friend Kolya. “Lie on the beach for two whole days?!” “Oh, no! We’ll squeeze every last drop, every last bit of cream—and whatever else there is to squeeze—out of those hours.” What can you fit into 60 hours in Cyprus? 1. Earn a diving certification The day before our flight, we contacted the Aloha Diver dive centre and arranged an accelerated course in diving with nitrox. We already had advanced diving qualifications, as the relevant documents confirmed. Now, though, we had decided to dive on a huge ferry, and for that a mix with a different nitrogen-to-oxygen ratio was better suited than compressed air. For the occasion, the dive centre did not even close at its customary 7 p.m. A friendly female manager and a stern instructor waited for us to arrive from the airport and then crammed theory into our stunned brains until ten. We solemnly promised the instructor that we would spend all night studying the technical material and be there at 8 the next morning on the dot. 2. Gorge ourselves on the local cuisine By half past ten, our stomachs were cramping from hunger and information overload. After all, that morning it had been November and we’d had a mountain of work; by evening, we were already thoroughly summery students in a night diving class in Cyprus! We were so delighted that we desperately wanted to eat something authentic. So we dived into a small taverna directly opposite the hotel. A bottle of Cypriot Commandaria wine and the mysterious national dish “MEZE” were supposed to restore our strength. In olden times, Commandaria was delivered to the courts of European monarchs. It is still made using the ancient method: the grapes are dried in the sun and crushed underfoot, and the resulting juice is poured into barrels or large clay jars to ferment. The cheerful waiter took our order and danced away backstage. While waiting for the main course, we thoughtfully chewed hot flatbreads and washed them down with wine. The full weight of this mistake knocked us out when, onto a table already crowded with salads, sauces, and seafood, there was hoisted a gigantic frying pan full of fried fish and some kind of piping-hot abundance of prawns and octopus. That was when it became clear that meze should be consumed by no fewer than three people if you are to devour the mountain of salads and sauces and the couple of hot dishes. Overcoming the pain in our overstuffed bellies, we nevertheless ate every last crumb. Then, bravely fighting the urge to lie down right where we had overeaten, we set off in search of the way to the sea. Our bellies howled: Carry me to sleeeep! So we looked for the shore near the hotel but, fortunately, did not find it. 3. Explore a sunken ferry At 8 in the morning, a pickup loaded us, the cylinders containing our new gas mix, and the rest of our diving gear, and set off for Larnaca. Numerous small boats take divers a few hundred metres offshore and patiently wait until everyone has had their fill of diving. Have you ever swum with Kamaz lorries—or monsters that look like them, at any rate? Well, we have now. The Swedish ferry Zenobia sank in 1980, on her maiden voyage, right in the middle of berthing. Something froze in the computer system, shifting the water ballast to the wrong place. And the “Kamaz lorries” (though of course they were not Kamaz lorries at all, but vehicles of a completely different make) became a gigantic weight that increased the list. The entire crew was evacuated, and the brand-new, 172-metre hulk was towed away to die, farther from the entrance to Larnaca harbour. For a long time, onlookers posed for photographs with the sinking giant behind them. And down she went. All 120 tonnes of her, along with her hundred brand-new forty-tonne lorries. No one died then; only the insurance company suffered losses, while the dive clubs and tour operators acquired an almost eternal source of steady income. It is now one of the best dive sites in the world. The wreck lies at convenient depths, the Kamaz lorries are still secured to the deck, and you can sit on the metal chairs, parallel to the seabed. Descending along the line from the buoy, we immediately felt like one of the submersibles from the research vessel Mstislav Keldysh. Sedate herrings glided quietly past, not at all alarmed by our company. Besides them, the marine life included a dark sausage-shaped fish, while on the bottom lay some creatures resembling bundles of black fire hose. After the Red Sea, the Mediterranean fauna was not terribly impressive. But that was not what we had come for. It takes at least a week to explore Zenobia completely. In three dives, we peered into every opening our gas supply allowed, descended from the starboard side to port, and promised this new Titanic that we would continue next time. Stern Nicholas, our Greek god and dive-centre instructor, gave the order to surface and awarded us our new diving certifications that very evening. 4. Step into the Middle Ages and pinch some cacti from the knights When you walk through the villages around Limassol, quiet evening conversations drift from every window, where Cypriot families sit over dinner. You look through doors opening straight onto the street—and become part of this warm little world. Everything in it is on view: an old man reads the newspaper, his old lady knits right out on the street—their living room is so close to passers-by that the pavement flows straight into the room’s patterned floor. At the edge of one such village there are not even any streetlamps, nor anything to remind you what century it is. A small old church stands on a patch of waste ground. More of a chapel, really. There is no glass in the windows; through the narrow openings you can see the wavering flame of an icon lamp: someone unseen in a long cassock has lit it before the icons. It feels as though, if you squeeze your eyes shut, you will open them again in the Middle Ages. Not far away, a plain square 14th-century castle glows in the darkness—one of Limassol’s sights. It is very good that there is no one here at night. You can easily hear the clatter of hooves and the jangle of armour, and imagine Richard the Lionheart marrying Berengaria of Navarre here many years ago. In the centuries that followed, the fortress housed many things, even a prison. Today there are very few exhibits inside the castle; they have trickled away to larger museums. Yet sometimes, to see how people lived 500 years before us, there is no need at all to peer at glass-fronted shelves of artefacts. Beside the ancient walls, we discovered tall, tree-like cacti with red, prickly fruit. I had wanted to taste them for so long that I decided to pick several under cover of darkness, come what may. Naive as I was then, I did not yet know how numerous and invisible their saboteur prickles were. Even careful peeling does not protect you from their bandit behaviour. The last prickle was extracted from my gum using a system of mirrors, backlighting, and tweezers only a month after we returned home. Incidentally, the cacti tasted so-so. 5. Greet the morning in milk-warm water Dawn has barely broken, yet the boldest rays of sunlight are already forcing their way through the heavy curtains. “Plenty more time to sleep,” I think, luxuriating beneath the cool sheet, with no idea that six in the morning is exactly the time to get up and dive into southern life. You could sell your soul for a sea like this, especially on 6 November. Unusually warm and gentle—it is exactly what Russians mean when they say “as warm as fresh milk.” The sun is high, which is somewhat unexpected at seven in the morning. Life on the coast is already in full swing: lovers of a morning dip splash about in the water. Along the shore, grasshopper-like old men jog past, lifting their knees comically as they keep their frail bodies in shape. Their life partners stroll sedately along the beach, waiting for their runners. Some, however, are energetically swinging their arms and bending from side to side, determined not to fall behind in athletic prowess. After swimming our fill and filling our lungs with sea air, we skip off towards a white convertible jeep and, after receiving the final instructions and a map of the island from the car’s owner, set out on our journey. We still have a whole day of adventure ahead of us out of our 60 hours... 6. Drive around the coast We hired a convertible Suzuki semi-jeep for 43 euros a day. It is hard to describe the blood-stirring delight of driving in an open car along a perfectly smooth road above a cliff dropping into the sea, soaking up the hot, salty wind and tropical scents with your entire body. Villages, mandarin groves, sugarloaf cliffs... And there is still a whole day ahead. The map of the island thrashes in my hands like a frantic kite, straining towards the blue distance, while I scream at the top of my lungs: “Kolya, I loooove you!!! Hooray!!!” Kolya is our friend who gave my husband this weekend in Cyprus for his birthday. 7. Become more beautiful Somewhere on the road from Limassol to Paphos stands the enormous rock of Petra tou Romiou (popularly known as Aphrodite’s Rock)—the place where the beautiful goddess of love and beauty emerged from the sea foam. Judging by the road signs, written for tourists’ convenience in Greek, naturally, we are already close. The car takes the turn nicely, and, ignoring the paved car park, we decide to drive along the shore all the way to the rock. From above, it looked perfectly passable: smooth, large pebbles covered the entire coast, and you could even make out tyre tracks... or so it seemed. We descend a dirt track to the very edge of the sea and, with the stubbornness of a ram, move towards our goal—Aphrodite’s Rock, whose silhouette beckons in the distance. According to legend, miraculous transformations befall everyone who bathes there: women regain their youth and beauty, while men become strong and brave. We badly wanted, at long last, to become both. 8. Bury the car The pebbles turned out to be snow-white boulders about 20 centimetres in diameter. After honestly spinning our wheels for about thirty metres and practically beaching the jeep on its “belly,” we decided to cool off. The waves softly lick our feet as we tread carefully over the round white stones. The water is perfectly clear. Every grain of sand, every pebble illuminated by flashes of sunlight, is visible on the bottom. Refracting through the moving water, the rays scatter into hundreds of rainbows. The complete absence of people on the shore is astonishing. Where has the entire holidaymaking world gone? It is nowhere near winter yet—the sea is +26°C, the air +31°C by day and +20°C by night. Some people have all the luck! No wonder irrepressible cheerfulness is a national trait here—what have they got to be sad about? No winter depression, no dank autumn, no polar night. A fairy tale! If only we could dig the car out. Lying naked on the hot pebbles beneath the hopelessly stuck vehicle, we cleared the axles, wheels, exhaust, and other important components from the rockfalls around them. The sun is blazing, our fingernails and elbows are being ground away against the stones, sweat is trickling down our foreheads, and our cheeks and shoulders are smeared with engine oil. Despair slithers into the heart like a snake and paints a picture: we are hitchhiking by the roadside, a recovery truck is digging the car out of a heap of stones, the jeep’s owner is shouting something untranslatable... and then we go straight to the airport. Faced with a forecast like that, you dig with three times the strength. After two hours of archaeological excavation, we try to drive out, placing the pitiful remains of planks found on the shore beneath the wheels. When the ship of the desert finally began to move... it headed straight for the sea. A vision flashed before my eyes: a recovery truck hauling the jeep out of the watery depths while the owner has hysterics, embellishing his already untranslatable stream of words with a bill for a tidy sum. My husband works magic with the steering wheel and pedals; I pray. “And yet we’re lucky,” I thought half an hour later. “Just three hours in the heat and engine oil, and the jeep is moving!” We were once again driving towards Petra tou Romiou—this time on the road, like normal people. I had to become more beautiful at long last! To make absolutely sure, I did not merely take a dip: I swam twice around the entire natural sculptural composition of boulders and made a dramatic exit at the very spot where, in my opinion, Aphrodite herself had done so. Now I am waiting for the results. 9. Fail to find the sea and block our bank card My transformation into a Goddess was taking its course, and we continued on to Paphos. The city faces Africa with all its thousand monuments of antiquity. Since ancient times, the object of worship here has been... You guessed it: still Aphrodite! Her temple lies to the east of the city. Having had our fill of antiquity, we became preoccupied with two questions: where to find a working cash machine, and how to reach the sea. The cash machine was absolutely essential because we had run out of cash and wanted something to eat. As to why, on an island already surrounded by sea on every side, we specifically needed to reach it in this particular city—I cannot answer. After weaving through the streets for a solid hour, with the glittering expanse of water directly in front of us, we never found a way down to the sea in Paphos. But we did find a cash machine. Anticipating lunch, dinner, cold juice, and ice cream, we rushed towards it as though it were our saviour. But, overheated, we got the PIN wrong. Twice. The soulless machine narrowed its electronic eyes bloodthirstily, awaiting the third and fatal attempt. But, intimidated by its gaping maw, we began calling the emergency service—the bank’s Moscow office. The Motherland was sorting things out while we drove back hungry. Closer to nightfall, everything started working again. After sticking our tongues out at another cash machine, which had done nothing to deserve it, we went to pack our things: we no longer needed any cash. Morning. Airport. While waiting to board, I meditatively pick prickles out from under my tongue, rub the elbow scraped raw by the exhaust, and cannot believe that only 60 hours have passed since we walked down the aircraft steps here.