Cyprus - Saturday 8th May 2010

I’ll start today off, and the main excitement is that today is the day that RICHARD BENNETT will be arriving, so Gaz took the opportunity to poop in his toilet before he gets here. We may yet all follow his example. You never told me this !! boo to you

To be fair, I left it as I found it. Which in this case was with a dead mosquito in the toilet. Though I should add the mosquito simply didn’t flush – I didn’t remove it then gently replace it, like some sort of sacrifice to the temperamental lavatorial gods of Greek plumbing.

It started off quite hazy and overcast this morning but it’s now nearly 10am and it’s starting to clear up, so I’m glad I’ve stayed home as I’m feeling a bit dizzy and weird – I think I had a bit too much sun yesterday and it’s left me a bit woozy – the plan for the others is a geocache trek into the Akamas peninsula to bag the half dozen or so that follow the coastal path beyond the Baths of Aphrodite, but I’ll let them fill you in when they get back.

Thanks Anna. Yes, as Anna said, we went for a trek up the coast of the Akamas peninsula. We drove over to and through Lachi and parked at the watery hole known as the Baths of Aphrodite. As described last time - it is a mossy ridden pit containing an eel and this time had the added bonus of a dead pigeon and some empty condom wrappers, lush! Mint flavoured if I’m not mistaken.

I didn’t know dead pigeons came in flavours?

The first cache took us through the Baths (well the trail, not the water) and up the other side through various types of foliage all labelled. We kept rising along what I can only assume was an ancient trading path over the hills to near the top. We were very glad that the sun was not fully out and it was a bit hazy otherwise we would have all died of heat exhaustion right there. This one was quite cool actually, we had come through the baths and got to the point on the other side and the tool was telling us it was behind us but to the right which yes took us up a hill, it was quite a hike up but it was so cool to see the view when we got there, I’ll drop a picture in this later, worked out where it should be and I saw a glimpse of orange in this bush, looked in and saw the cache, bish bash cache.

Given everyone else has covered what and where, I’ll cover what it was like – lots of hot and a great deal of up.

The cache was bagged and signed up by us all and we then went down the way we came along the E4 footpath following the coastline northward.

The footpath was an unmade road with a loose surface. I thought that the Pimp-Mobile would have been fine along it but we soon got to some incredibly steep inclines, I then re assessed, no matter how cool our car was, I just didn’t want to risk it.

The pimpmobile might have made it, but I doubt the Note would have. Not that it’s a bad car per se, it’s just designed for school runs rather than stunt runs and despite looking quite tall doesn’t actually have much ground clearance. Also, as it had a manual gearbox I think it would have protested quite a lot being revved like mad in first gear for about an hour.

Along the path we snagged a further two caches. One was missing and needed maintenance and the other was very well hidden in an interesting rock formation. Boo Hiss to the missing one but we got to the rock face one and that was a heck of a cache to get to….

The rock face one was very cool as it was literally a ‘rock face’ – it had weathered into essentially a natural Easter Island head.

The day was getting on and the temperature was rising so we decided to head back to the car. We were half way through the water supplies so it seemed sensible. Checked the one that was missing on the way back and found where it “should” have been but decided that it was gone and it needed reporting and carried on.

Let it go, dude. Let it go!

The trail back was more of the same, sweat, pain and a lot of dust. There were a large amount of German hikers going both ways and most of them were elderly, it made me a little ashamed as I was almost ‘done’  from the experience whereas they looked pretty chipper! I think I need to work on my endurance walking and fitness when I get back to the UK. Trail back was bloody hard!! Seriously I’m just not fit, I admit this openly and boy this pushed me and my limits. We got there in the end, I was having major flashbacks of my cadet days starting to resent doing this in the first place but wanted to prove to myself I could do it because believe it or not I was enjoying doing it (yeah I know but I was !!)

Walk back was indeed quite hot, but the occasional sea breeze helped a lot and the views took your mind off feeling tired. Plus on getting back and passing the camp site there’s always the realisation that there’s someone better off than yourself – specifically anyone spending days on end in 30 degree heat under canvas who has to use a portaloo that’s previously been occupied by the aforementioned troop of German tourists. Not that I have anything against Germans, but they do like lots of beer and curries sausages. You can see where I’m going here. Or, rather, you don’t want to see where they’ve been going.

The view from the path of the coast was amazing. The rugged and rocky coastline spread out in front of us with a steep slope down to the sea below. We could see all the way along the bay and in the distance in a bank of haze we could see land where we guessed our house would have been.

There were a number of local lizards en route and surprisingly snails as well. We thought that they must have been pretty ‘hard as nails’ due to them being moist little buggers.

On arriving at the car we headed back to the house and met with Anna and saw how she was. Goldy headed out again to get some internet and to have another look for the Limni Jetty Cache from the other day. Having got the new co-ords for the Limni cache I thought I’d have a look, but alas it appears to also be gone unless I’m just being a numpty about magnetic caches…

I drove back to the Fly Away pub to get some internets and log our finds for the day, got there, logged on, had a refreshing glass of coke and a dirty chilli burger to satisfy my tummy J

Gaz and Janey went out for a small drive to get some bread and have a look at the village of Argaka. – they returned pretty quickly to be fair. The village was tiny and there was not a great deal there.

The bakery was a fabulous little place, with tons of really nice looking home-made stuff. I don’t have a massively sweet tooth so the baklava wasn’t up my alley what with it being made with all the sugar in the known universe (a slight exaggeration, but not far off), but the bread was lovely.

Upon everyone’s return, we received word from RICHARD BENNETT that he was unable to make it out from the UK due to work commitments. He has therefore been branded a loser and I took a ceremonial dump in the toilet that would have been en suite to his room. BENNETT you suck so hard…… got back went for disco nap woke up then had Andy asking me if I wanted a chicken burger that I’d bought on the BBQ went downstairs and was greeted with…..

BENNETT is the gay. Plus I wanted to have a go in the convertible he was allegedly hiring.

Team Fire (just Anna really) started the barbeque and I broke open the meat purchased the day before yesterday. It was a lot bigger than I thought.

We have over two kilos of beef rump steak cut into three strips about a foot long and four inches wide, eight pork cutlets and a load of other burgers, sausage and Stifados. This would have been about right if RICHARD BENNETT had been able to make it out, our mortal bellies however were not able to manage such a feast.

I put two of the beef steaks, five cutlets and two burgers on. Gaz and Janey were in charge of the salad.

When it was ready, it truly was a sight to behold.

The sun was setting, the food tasted great and we were in good company. AMEN to that, even if RICHARD BENNETT was absent…..

MEAT HAPPENED!!!

Tonight we are off to “Fly Again”, a local Irish Pub that “that man” told us not to go to. It is Karaoke night, I’m sure as it is off season we will be the only people there, which will be good.

The Fly Away (Fly Again - someone kept calling it the wrong name all week like a stupider) was as expected and quite a nice place, the owner I think was a German lady, the karaoke compare was called Daz (or Darren) his other half who’s name I forget started the singing, there was a table of three and two other people at the bar, all in all it was Anna, Andy and myself doing most of the singing, just the way we like it, well to a point, good night though, a few bears, an email from HackiB the Geocacher who has placed most of the areas Caches emailed me to say he deleted my comment about the lack of his cache at one of his locations due to a spoiler but he’s going to replace it. I messaged him back asking to confirm the Limni one was actually there because we’re convinced it’s not now….

Christ on all manner of bikes. The Fly Again is the sort of place I see in my nightmares of pikey holiday destinations populated with red-faced idiots in England tops and knotted hankies demanding egg and chips and “none of that foreign muck”. Actually that may have been a bit harsh as it wasn’t rough by any stretch (indeed it wasn’t much of anything, given it was mostly empty) and the staff were very nice, but it was undeniably somewhat naff – especially as the local idea of an Irish pub appears to be nailing any old crap to the ceiling and walls and not selling any local beer. The karaoke was actually fairly enjoyable (to watch – to participate in for me would have been about as much fun as bowel surgery performed by a drunk with a broken hedge trimmer), but you get the impression that everyone bar us, which was basically ex-pats, do that every week with the same songs and probably have done for years now, like some sort of 1970s pop-powered Groundhog Day. The bewildered reaction when Anna sung something by a relatively modern band was palpable. Thankfully, Goldy set things straight with a rousing rendition of the Chas & Dave “classic”, Rabbit. Also, all their arcade machines were switched off L

Bed time now, off to a dam tomorrow and more caches, oh and I’m 2179 miles from home, well the nearest cache near home, it’s gonna be fun looking them up when we get there.