Last Days in Paphos

Tuesday we started off the day by scuba diving along a Roman Wall in the Paphos harbour. We got all of our introductory training from a master diver, German(?) instructor named Frank, who has done some 15,000 dives, many of which were in the Carribean actually. Now he teaches Americans, Brits, and people from former Soviet Republics here in Cyprus... go figure. Tina was a little shaky at first. We only went down to 6 meters. But things smoothed out after the other two kids in our group left or settled down a little. I'm sure it wasn't too different than what many divers have experienced; but it was entirely unique, given that neither one of us have ever been that deep or gone scuba diving, let alone along an ancient wall with antique amphorae and small sea creatures all around. It was addictive, but we fought the temptation to do the afternoon dive in a sunken ship down to 11 meters.

It's difficult to describe succinctly with detail where we went on different parts of Cyprus because the island is so irregularly shaped. So forgive some of the oversimplifications with mention of quadrants and directions. Anyhow, after the dive, we headed to one of the farther reaches of the Northwest quadrant of Cyprus, the city of Polis. It appears to be a straight shot from Paphos, but it's up one side of a mountain and down the other. We went through a wooded area, with a unique bamboo species and some kind of abundant white bark (related to birch?) trees, to seemingly the hippie beach. Again, Gorgeous. We've come to expect nothing less. Swim, sleep, drive back, wash up, go out. It's becoming ritual.

Today (Wednesday) we checked on the dives for today. The only one my current level of expertise qualified for was in the afternoon, and we already had other plans. Those plans included returning our rental car, finding out how to get to Larnaka airport (quite a distance actually) cheaply tomorrow, and get a dune buggie or quadbike to re-explore the untouched offroad terrain around Lara Beach. After much ado, we settled on the quadbike. It was a lot of fun. Tina tried her hand at hitting some dunes solo. She loved it. We swam for a bit, but then something drew us farther along the coast. And that's where it's always at. Just when you think you've gone too far, you're too far from all the tourists and maybe even too far from the countryside natives, you go a little farther. And that's when we happened upon the real gem: The North end of Lara Beach. We saw several of the sea turtle nests (no eggs though - they're under the sand and it's illegal to touch them). And the beach was the best. At the very end there were dusted white rocks and low white rock cliffs hanging against the water. No waves. Perfectly clear water. Various layers of different colored sand: lines of black, dark, light, tan. No people. You could walk at least a hundred feet out on smooth sea bottom until you'd need to start swimming. My only regret: we didn't get there sooner and we didn't have facemasks to explore the rocky coves.

This evening we made it to a taverna with live music, authentic greek dancing, and an overall fun atmosphere. We're checking some logistics for our next few days of travel before we head back to the hotel and tomorrow move on to the East side of the island, Cairo, and hopefully some Turkish experiences. We miss you all, but not too much.