Cyprus - Day 10 - Aphrodite's bath

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I'm afraid this will be the last post for Cyprus, it wasn't my last day there since I left the following day late at night but on the last day Alex and I pretty much stayed by the beach all day...but when it's raining outside, even cold...who wants to know that?!

Anyway, as this was the day before the last Alex and I decided to do a little bit of tourism. We had to do a drop off at the airport at Pafos. Andreas, Kirstin and Progobi were flying back to the UK...

So we decided to check out Coral Bay which is not far from Pafos and it's very touristic... It must have something to be so touristic we thought.

It is not a bad place but nothing extraordinary I'm afraid.

As you can see it's a very touristic beach full of people in different shades of red...
but we didn't think much of it, let's just say we weren't very impressed by the place. In fact, there weren't many Cypriots on that beach most of the people there were tourists. They had some fun water sports, you could hear people´s screams while being pulled from a boat on an air matress at top speed...

At lunch time we after looking for a good place where to have lunch with not much luck we decided to go to Kathikas to our usual venue. It was my 3rd time visiting that restaurant but it was so good that, why not?

We didn't even have to look at the menu...we knew what we wanted. :-) Mezze! For my total surprise I found Daphne and her Mom there (Daphne is the Duch girl that came with me to the Zenobia).

In the afternoon we decided to get back to our usual beach until 7 pm or so when the sun starts to go down and then go and visit Aphrodite's bath.

The path to Aphrodite's bath was wide and easy to walk although not without its perils...

It was quite a short walk from the road, maybe 10 mins

The legend says that's the place where Aphrodite used to take her baths...

but after seing the place, I wouldn't dare to bath myself in that hole...I wouldn't even dare to push my worst enemy in it...and I don't consider myself someone with higher standards than a Greek Goddess... but if the legend says so... Judge by yourself!

Would you have a bath in there?

After Aphrodite's bath we decided to follow the path which goes all alongside the coast for many miles. Our plan was just to walk a little bit further until it started to get dark and get back to the villa.

The views were magnificent.

There were lots of olive trees all around

Lots of cliffs all around

One were you can see the views

and the same one were you can see how high the place was in comparison to the sea...

There was someone practicing some water skiing, not very successfully I must add

There were some very flashy plants too

It became night pretty quickly so we had to turn around and head back for the car. When we reached the car was already night.

As I said earlier the following day we just took it easy and had a nice and relaxing day.

I did like Cyprus and thanks to the wedding I was fortunate enough to be among some Cypriots so I got to see more than just the touristic bits. I enjoyed the wedding, the Zenobia was a mind blowing experience, the sea was always warm and blue...very invinting

I would totally recommend Cyprus to anyone.

Cyprus - Day 9 - The Zenobia wreck

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Zenobia 1979

Totally amazing, without any doubt whatsoever these were the best 2 dives I've ever done.

A little bit of background information on this dive site. The Zenobia was a ferry, 200 metres long that it was on its way to Syria carrying 104 lorries all loaded with cargo. Due to a recurring problem it never made it to its destination and it sunk off the coast of Cyprus very near to Larnaca.

If you are curious about it, you can read all the history here: Zenobia History

It was a bit of a long drive from Lachi (which is close to where I am staying right now)

If you force your eyes just enough to see the two red circles one on the top left corner of Cyprus (Lachi), the other on the centre south-east, you'll be able to see Lachi and Larnaca.

It took us about 2 hours by car to reach Larnaca and we were 3 divers, the dive master (a nice and very easy-going Italian girl) a Dutch girl called Daphne and myself.

 Dutch on the left, Italian on the right. :-)

The minimun depth for the Zenobia is about 18 metres and it goes from 18 all the way to 41 metres deep, so in order to be able to go to the Zenobia you need to be certified to a minimun of 30 metres or you can take a two day course to get certified up to 40 metres. Unfortunately this time I didn't have the time to do the course and 30 metres were good enough for me I had no intention of doing any dive through.

Below you can see an artist represention of the wreck and how it stands on the bottom.

It is a very popular diving site and it is considered one of the top 10 in the world, quite rightly in my humble opinion although I haven't been on any of the other nine to compare...just give me time. ;-)

The place is amazing and it's hard to describe the feeling of diving through the wreckage.

I was a bit nervous at first since this was the first time I was doing a dive so deep and for so long. On the first dive we went down to 30 metres and dove by the propelers and the side of the boat from which you could see the life saving boats, full size trucks, we even put our heads through a window that had a pocket of air in it.

Another thing worth mentioning, specially after yesterday's diving experience, is that it is forbidden to fish in a radius of 3 miles around the Zenobia so the place was full of fish of all sizes and colours, it looked like a fish tank and they are very used to divers since there are always lots and lots of divers at all times so they weren't scared of us and they would go and get really, really close to you, so close that sometimes you had to scare them a bit so they would let you see what's in front of you.

We saw several huge barracudas and a morrey hiding on the back of the ferry.

The other good part about the Zenobia, specially if you are prone to sea sickness, like myself is that the trip on the boat to get there from the harbor takes less than 10 minutes and it's on a very still water so you can leave your sea sick medication back home. :-)

Another thing I found really amazing is that the wreck is full of divers at all times and they are everywhere some inside, others outside, some by the side...everywhere so sometimes when you are diving over a window you can see the bubles of someone diving through the inside of the boat it's truly a magical experience.

Unfortunately, I didn't managed to get a camera for the ocasion and although Daphne had one and took some pictures at the time of writing she still hasn't past them on to me so I'm afraid I'll have to use some pictures I found on the internet to ilustrate this blog entry...I'd wish I had the photos, some were really cool.

Here are some of the photos

After the first dive they took us back to the harbor where we stayed for 1 hour or so, changed the equipment and went back for the second dive.

I removed a couple of kilos from my weight belt since on the first dive when I started the descend I was dropping like a stone and had to make quite an effort not to sink too fast. So I took a couple of kilos and then it got easier to get my buoyancy right. I was also far more relax so I enjoyed it even more than the first one.

This time we even went through one of the windows and got inside the ship control room and then went out through another window, we had a peek at the canteen and some other rooms. You could see the curtains and the electrics, some people diving on the inside and again lots of fish everywhere.

Another thing that drew my attention were some of the other divers, some were diving with two 12 l tanks one under each arm, others had a 15 l tank on the back and a smaller one under one arm. I am not sure how they use these extra tanks but they surely need more than the standard 12 l tanks if they start at 40 metres and spend quite a little bit of time at that depth. I also got the impression that some of the divers were coming very often like several times a week they seemed to know every inch of the ferry.

All in all it was a fantastic experience. Had I stayed longer in Cyprus I would have gone back despite of having to get up at 5 am. I would totally recommend this dive site to anyone who is into diving. It is one of the top 10 diving sites in the world for a reason!

Cyprus - Day 8 - Diving in St George's Island

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I had read, on the internet, that Cyprus was quite an interesting place for diving. It has over 200 different species of fish and above all, it has got the Zenobia wreck, ranked as one of the 10 ten diving spots in the world. I just couldn't miss that!

My plan was to do one day diving to work out the right weight for me and also to get acquaintanced with the equipment and another day just to do the Zenobia.

The Zenobia is quite a deep dive, starts at 18 metres and it goes all the way down to 41 so you need to pay close attention to your air consumption and you do not want to be checking your equipment that day, you want to make sure all the small problems get sorted out and everything is right before you go there with the aim of not having to worry about anything but enjoying the dive.
 
I chose a local company that was in Lachi by the harbour, they looked busy (always a good sign) and after I chatted with them and enquired about prices and services I felt pretty confident they were a good choice. As it turned out, I have no regrets. They were professional, helpful, friendly and the prices were quite reasonable.

I must admit this was without a doubt the most disapointing diving day I've done so far. There were no fish except for some small ones here and there. No coral either. I can't blame the diving company, nothing to do with them really. Not many good places to dive in the area it seems. They do with what they have.

In the end I didn't mind too much because my aim was to do a couple of dives before going to the Zenobia, just to get the weight right and get confy with the equipment, but you always hope to see something more than just rocks.don't you? hence my disappointment.

On the positive side, St. George's island was only 15 minutes away by boat... so it was a quick trip to the diving spot therefore I am glad to report that the sea sickness medication was not required. :-).

They took us to this tiny island

and we just dove by one side on the first dive and the other side on the second dive. Both dives were quite shallow although on the second we got to go through some small caves which made the dive a bit more interesting.

The water was warm and of a very intense blue, really tempting

Wouldn't you swim in this water?

Our dive master was the one below

My dive buddy was a nice russian chap called Naeel Tazetdinov

who owns a villa in Cyprus and likes to come and dive every now and then. Luckly he had a camera (this time I was unable to get one myself).Thanks to him you can see a few underwater photos in this post. :-)

Mental note, once you have a job, buy one!



And this is it... St. Georges Island...as there wasn't much to see we spent most of the time taking pictures of ourselves. :-) That and the caves made the dive more fun.

And on the next one you can see some fish!!

By 13:00 we had done the two dives and were heading back to the harbour.

The rest of the day was just to relax and get ready for tomorrow where I'll be doing the Zenobia! and for that, I'll have to get up at 5 am but that's another story...

Before going to bed I managed to take a few snapshots of the sunset

Not a bad way to end this post. :-)

Cyprus - Day 7 - The aftermath

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I hadn't realised how dusty was at the restaurant until this morning I had a look at my shoes...

Warning! anyone with OCD please refrain from looking at the below photograph...

We all had quite a long night not just because of the long drive home but because with the heat and the lack of air-con, nobody managed to sleep in the house...but that's what the "siesta" is for! isn't it?

If any of you is curious about what the Greek Orthodox ceremony is all about, below you can read all about it. This is the booklet I was given 5 minutes before the wedding and that I was trying to memorise in order to avoid looking like an idiot...

I must admit it is very well done and after the ceremony, once I had the time to look at it in detail, some of the oddities I saw in the ceremony, suddenly became clear and they kinda made sense.

As you can imagine, life was tough by the swimming pool until we saw a big lizard and tried to take a picture of it. It took us more than 15 minutes to get the perfect picture, the beast didn't want to be photographed it seemed.

Nice specimen, isn't it?

We were all kinda tired so we decided to stay by the pool all day and do nothing too taxing...

 And at night we all went to a restaurant to have our last dinner together since some people would be leaving the following day.

I have to admit the food was good but the price was not!, 50 € per person is way too much in my opinion... and thank God we got the desserts for free!

On the other hand we barely haven't spent any money on this holiday so if one day you have to throw away 50€, so be it, but seriously I've been in other places in Cyprus were the food was equally good and 8 times cheaper. It certainly wasn't what we all understand as good value for money.

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