Cyprus - Sunday 9th May 2010

We got up and went to a drive today to grab some Geocaches. We managed to get four of them today.

We drove out to our local dam at Evretou. The dam is named after a small village that we visited later on in the day. As dams go it was fairly unimpressive.  It’s not like the Mohne Dam in Westphalia or the series of dams outside Brecon. These are massive brick built emplacements designed to stand out and be a marvel of architecture and engineering. This one at Evretou was a little more subtle, overgrown and rocky. Oh well, each to their own. . There was no cache here but the area was nice and a good visit all the same. The water on the lake side looked very inviting and quite clear.

The dam was a mild disappointment – I’d been hoping for some sort of epic, but it was actually more or less a road over the end of a (very large) pond. Some very nice rugged scenery though.

There was a cache we were looking for at the other end of the lake to the south and on the way we logged a few.

The first one we snagged was at a church called St Aikaterini. It was a classic Greek Orthodox style church that was locked up so we were unfortunately not allowed to enter. It always surprises me how much litter is left laying around, even at religious sites.

The church was very pretty and quite rural, with an ornamental bell in the grounds. Shame the wall paintings outside were so faded/damaged.

Our next stop was at a random chapel in the middle of nowhere that we could only have found with the help of a Geocache. The small one roomed chapel was on the side of a valley along a very narrow single tracked concrete road with, at some points, a sheer drop to certain death – just how we like it *gulp*.

Inside the chapel were painted icons of holy people and candles, oils and other religious paraphernalia.

Being as we were in the following car, we had absolutely no idea where we were off to down the tiny dirt track. So to turn up in a steep valley (with a fairly serious drop-off) at a tiny church was actually quite a surprise. It was a nice little place – and to be honest, not being religious I find simple places like this one much more interesting than massive cathedrals and the like. This is where the real people go, not some gold-encrusted palace populated by bishops in hats a mile high.

Hunger started to set in soon after this cache and we went up to the town of Simou. The town is very small but has a large church and a school. The only place that looked open to eat was called “Pomegranate”. It was open (but unfortunately had a private party going on) I spoke with the owner “Kevyn” and we all looked hungry and tired. Much to our surprise he let us stay for some drinks so we stopped outside at a table and sipped away at our much needed beverages. Soon after he brought out possibly the best plate of chips I have ever eaten. They were very obviously hand cut and very fresh. The man is a Geordie Legend and EVERYONE should go to his place to get food. (Thursdays and Saturdays I think)

Kevyn was a top bloke indeed, even if he does spell his name in the most absurd way possible. As was the bloke who’s private party it was, who looked a bit like Richard Branson. Even though we’d crashed it he happily came out and said hello.

Simou was otherwise pretty dead, though there was the fascinating site of a bench that had been placed on a wall 8 feet in the air looking out over some bins. They really like to make their pensioners work for a nice sit-down round there. The large church in the town square also seemed to be hugely out of scale for the size of the village – like plonking St Paul’s down in the middle of a little country hamlet.

Feeling refreshed and happy again we continued our mystery tour and the next place we visited was an ancient bridge. It didn’t go over water anymore, something, probably time’ had shifted the course of the river about 20 meters away. The cache was found, logged and we moved on.

Our last stop of the day was the deserted village of Evretou. This was a Turkish village which had its occupants removed during the mid 70’s. It was now being used to house goats and farm equipment. It was really eerie and it seemed a great shame that the village, which was in a prime location next to the Evretou reservoir, just sitting abandoned.

Weirdly, despite the village only being emptied in the 1970s there seemed to be no roads between any of the houses. And not that the roads were just overgrown – they literally weren’t there and there seemed to be no space for where they might have been. It was very strange – if you’ve ever played “Resident Evil 4”, it’s more or less just like the beginning of that.

We returned home for a leftovers barbeque and at the end of the meal we were attacked (well invaded) by a giant creature that Jane thinks might be a field cricket. He was VERY ugly and a little bit wrong looking.

The terrifying thingy turned out to be a mole cricket, according to Janey’s guide to bugs and thingies. During the barbecue we were also visited by a very stupid cat – stupid because it left precisely before we were actually going to give it some meat.