Cyprus - Friday 7th May 2010

Today we awoke to the sounds of the artificial waterfall outside bed was nice and warm but I could see shafts of sunlight coming through the blinds.

Day three on Cyprus and today we had a trip to Paphos Zoo planned. Anna was very excited about this last night. Just waiting for Goldy to get up. ZOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

We’ve been reliably informed that the UK has woken to a hung parliament, oh well, still back to the holiday.

10:30 Just woken up, need coffee…..

When everyone was ready, and after a morning frazzle by the pool we set off over the hills to the Paphos Animal and Bird Park. I missed this one last year because I wanted a day to myself and Command and Conquer needed finishing.

This year I got to see the uber cool bird show, wander round looking at all the really cool animals and reptiles. Goldy wussed out when it came to the snakes which is understandable due to his irrational fear.

Zoo is cool! It always worries me visiting zoos in other countries about whether they treat their naminals right, but I am very pleased to say that these guys have done pretty well. It’s quite expensive to get in (€15.50 each) but it’s a nice big place with plenty to see. The bird show is quite fun, the parrots do all those silly things they do at every bird show, then the owls came out and blimey, they’re big! The largest one could have easily stolen a child. After the show, we started the long walk around the site. The whole time you’re accompanied by the calling of peacocks – they’re overrunning the place! Mostly the park has birds, in loads of varieties – tropical birds, several massive birds of prey, and even some that we’d consider boring – wood pigeon for example, but it’s great regardless. On the animal side of things, they’ve got loads of goats and antelope-type creatures like oryx’s (oryxes, oryxii?) along with camels and donkeys, there’s several types of monkeys, marmosets, meerkats and a massive tortoise as well! We went in the reptile house, and see, I think snakes and lizards and stuff are cool, so I was very happy! The big albino python they let you have photos with was in here today, she’d been fed earlier and they have to give her time to digest before being handled again, which was a shame, but she was nice and active in her enclosure, wiggling around all snakey-like.

The zoo was indeed quite excellent, despite the initial dodginess of a 1970s style parrots on bikes show, and the disappointment that the climax of the Parrot and Owl show wasn’t a species-on-species combat experience. From which you may deduce I don’t particularly like parrots. I do hope the escaped goat we saw has made it to safety though. Which in this case might be back into its enclosure. Oh, and being inland and it being midday, it was SERIOUSLY hot. However, it was the first opportunity of the holiday so far to have a Maxibon, the official holiday ice-cream. For the uninitiated, a Maxibon is basically a Wall’s Feast made a bit bigger with half not covered in chocolate but with some squidgy wafers instead. They’re inexplicably not sold in the UK but seem to crop up everywhere else in Europe. And as the saying goes, “It’s not a holiday without a Maxibon!”. Though to be honest the saying could actually say anything, as I just made it up.

After the zoo we went to Agios Georgios (St George). We went there last time. It’s a lovely little harbour with some fishing boats, a small church and a restaurant overlooking the bay and some “tramp holes” which were part of an ancient settlement.

The church here was quite pleasant from the outside, but like many churches inside quite gaudy. I’m sure there’s a niche in the market for a mainstream religion that gets its interior design tips from Ikea and goes for a more minimalist aesthetic.

After an annoyingly expensive and quite small portion of  yeah it really wasn’t that good nom nom-let and chips we headed back along the winding mountainous roads, back to Polis and then home. Apparently, nice view and chips costs a hell of a lot more than chips alone.

I think the Pimp-mobile needs a lot softer suspension for off road and a manual gear box. The automatic just does not have anywhere close to enough power to be of any use at all really. I think I miss the Atoz. The Nissan Note was, thus far, coping better than I’d feared. One thing it did have in its favour was the air con at least seemed to have some oomph to it, being able to make the car cool as opposed to feeling like a very mild breeze coming from someone sucking a mint.

Tonight I think we are off into Polis again to try a different restaurant and to get some wi-fi. We need to map out some geocaches and plan tomorrows walk along from Latchi up the coast to the blue lagoon.

We did indeed get off to Polis and to a place called Chix Chox (as recommended by “the man” Paul from James Villas.

I got off to a rocky start with the owner, as we approached I got all the comments like “what’s the weather like up there?” (I am quite tall).

I thought to myself, there is plenty of competition, taking the piss not a good way of bringing someone into your establishment.

We had a look round at menus for the other restaurants but finally settled on Chix Chox because of the price.

The meals were pretty good actually. We had a 3 course deal, all the local delicacies were included in the menu, and it tasted lovely.

After the meal we logged on and mapped out a number of Geocaches, planning tomorrow’s adventure. Two town center wi-fi’s mapped Chix Chox’s one is on 97A9719769, more coming up when we have them,

Chix Chox food was actually pretty good, even if the owner was a bit of an arse initially, and the free wine was worth having to drink rather than just handy to have in case you ever had to clean the internal workings of some sort of heavy industrial machinery. I had the feta and chilli as a starter, which turned out to be literally a bowl of cheese with chillis in it. Surprisingly though, it was actually very nice, though I’m not sure a massive bowl of incredibly spicy chunky cheese soup would be something I’d have that often. Highlight of the night though (for us, not the staff) was the retirement-age English couple who seemed to be in competition with each other with regard to who could tell the dullest anecdote to a foreign waitress with no concept of what they were on about. While good customer service is one thing, if I owned a restaurant outside of the British Isles I’m not sure I’d be able to bring myself to fire a staff member for telling some old duffer that no, actually I wasn’t really that interested in whether the distance driving to Didcot from Kidderminster (or wherever – I can’t accurately recall because by then I was being bored rigid by proxy) was 2 hours when it should be 1.5 no matter how much the customer complained.

Oh, and then some drunk guy gave a piggyback to his girlfriend in the town square and she faceplanted. Excellent!