Ana, Jimbob and Libby’s Cyprus extravaganza!

After much persuasion, a night on the beach and conversations like this:
Robin -IF you go
Ana- we ARE going
Robin- but IF you go you will only see a goat. And it’s boring.



We finally set off on our little trip round Cyprus
Keco, our amazing and friendly neighbour arrived at the goat shed early and gave us a lift to Girne. (awwwwww) After arriving in Girne we took a very breezy Dolmus (bus) to Nicosia. Lovely views of the Venetian Walls, the ancient Sofia Cathedral and the courtyard of the old Inn. Briefly lost in a seemingly endless succession of carpenter stalls and staring men. Much ice-cream enjoyed. We crossed the border into the Greek side of Cyprus. Poor Ana “suffered much” with her Capeverdean passport as the security officers struggled yet again to discover whether this country actually exists. We immediately went to the top of Debenhams. This sounds an odd thing to do, but it was advised to us that the top floor had amazing views of both sides of the border, and there indeed was! Only tourist destination seemed to be the motorcycle museum though. We passed.
Following this was an epic, roasting walk in the sun to a bus stop in the middle of nowhere. Only to find that the very unhelpful tourist information lady had directed us to an obscure suburb of Nicosia. Thirsty, desperate and slightly crazed by the sun, a local woman rescued us when we asked for directions saying simply “get in the car” and then proceeded to drive us to the bus stop for Famagusta!! To use Jimbob’s words, the bus was “ all kinds of sweaty” and took a good hour. When we finally reached the city there were absolutely no signs to the centre of town, but by some incredible fluke, we managed to walk there by accident. On arrival we drank about a gallon of water and orange juice sold to us by a man who insisted “ go left, Nicosia, left at roundabout. Nicosia. Left”… and so on. There we saw many Ancient ruins and another mosque where we unluckily ran into the ticket man on the way out. We spent about 10 minutes laughing at the green peace cyclist dude (who’d cycled all the way through Africa, and was going on to Iran) who was struggling to understand why the same ticket man kept saying “one person two tickets”. We bought a Fez as a peace offering for Robin, and in the faint hope that he would give us the night off, after our pathetic 3 hours sleep the night before. This failed.
Night on the beach was a struggle. There were a couple of nests, but we found it difficult to keep our eyes open. However, as Ana says “After Happiness death is nothing!!”