Cyprus - Thursday 6th May 2010

Slept like an absolute log last night. Nothing woke me all night except for the ear splitting alarm I set for this morning. Waking up with no Suzie was WELL weird, didn’t like it at all, 5 more sleeps and counting, heard movement downstairs so got my shabby ass out of bed, quick shower and went down to investigate.

There is a need to get up this morning as “The Man” from James Villas is coming over to (in all certainty) sell us stuff like days out etc.

Jane is up and the Kettle is on, good times. I’m probably going to forego a shower this morning in favour of an outside shower and swim in a bit. I might have to wait for the sun to come over the house though and start warming the pool.

Good coffee Jane.

“The Man” also known as Paul came round and didn’t actually try to sell us anything surprisingly. He did mention that if we said “Paul sent us” in a couple of tavernas then there would be free wine. In reality we don’t feel confident in the coolness of Paul. It seems that he may have some outstanding bar bills so I think we might try and blag some wine anyway. Paul sported a nice line in nylon slacks. I suspect on hot days he’d generate enough static electricity to power his own villa. He probably treats himself to a nice pair every few months with the cash raised from backhanders from his recommended restaurants. Obviously the local Irish pub hasn’t got in on this scam as he was quite damning with faint praise about it being a place for stereotypical ex-pats. Quite ironic coming from a stereotypical ex-pat. Maybe they’d just laughed at his slacks once too often and he’d taken offence. Or he may have accidentally electrocuted the bartender’s dog.

Today we went out to the end of the road intending to go to Polis for the day. In stead of turning left to Polis, Goldy suggested we go right, so we did. We took a coastal road east and got as far as Pachyammas before we decided to stop and head back as there was nothing really going on at all. In hindsight, using the force on this occasion seemed rather crap as there was less than nothing that way, however…..

I checked my Geocaching App on my iBore and there were a few on the way back so we gave them a try. This did lead me to finding out about Geocaching which is a bit like pokemon with regards to finding something that someone else has put there, marking that we’ve found it and then going to the next one, and catching them all and it’s awesome.

The first was at Pomos marina. It is a lovely little cove, close to the town with a good size restaurant serving local fish and all the typical Greek dishes, more on that later. Disappointingly, Pomos looked like “Pornos” on the map, but wasn’t actually called that. I was expecting a town built on the sale and distribution of VHS copies of lewd films like the ones Five used to show when it was still called Channel 5 and had no money. It was, though, a really nice little place.

We had a gander at the marina, lots of little fishing boats with nets and ropes and stuff, there was a big dead fish floating in the water and a shouty kitty living in the rocks which shouted at us, then on to find the cache. We had a short walk along the beach, then up a rockface and doubled back on ourselves. Typically, it was under a stone near to the cliff. The cache itself was a bit worrying. It was cylindrical about eight inches long and about and inch in diameter, who knows where it had been *shudders*.

Opened, signed and replaced with no muggle interference. Which whilst in the right area (read on the cliff not down by the sea) I had in fact walked right past it, but not knowing what to look for it was a bit meh but good that we got it, my first Geocache, Suzie’s gonna love this as it means we can go walking lots J

The restaurant was our next stop. We had a simple meal of Halloumi (squeaky) cheese in pitas, a spot of Tzatziki and a round or two of water to replenish the reserves. Didn’t come to a great deal of cash so we paid and left quickly, just in case it was an error. Please note, I’d just had a can of pepsi, the rest are the dishonest scumbags :op though I’ve no idea how they came to that price on the bill

I dropped a 2 euro coin over the balcony, which Simon kindly retrieved for me, finding a small dice along the way. Prizes! Also, at this point some very religious looking people arrived at the restaurant. And by that I mean they were wearing Orthodox garb, not that they were crucified or doing miracles or anything. There were some splendid beards on display, which seem to be compulsory for being a Greek-style vicar. In fact, their entire theology may be based around amount and length of facial hair rather than piousness. Not necessarily a good system as that’d make Hitler a higher rank than, say, a clean-shaven deity type such as Buddha. Still, you’ve got to start somewhere I suppose and at least Hitler would be a lot lower down the pecking order than Santa. But then again ZZ Top would be equivalent to a whole squad of Jesuses (Jesii?).

We got back into the car and drove west, to the abandoned Paradise Taverna for the next cache, struck out on this one. It wasn’t so bad, it was nice and hot, the cache didn’t seem to exist though. I even looked in an abandoned commercial dishwasher and under some pallets that I think something was living under. Bit scary.

I got a seed stuck to my shoe here that looked like a tiny conker. Excellent.

The next cache was towards Polis and it was at a beach (if you could call it that). Limni Jetty is in the middle of nowhere and used to be used as a local copper mine which was closed in the 70’s. The buildings had fallen into disrepair and looked more home to tramps than anything at all useful. Loads of odd graffiti, like the now legendary “put your Nazis in the bin” slogan and advertising for the Low Bap society – perhaps a self help group for ladies with saggy boobs? I don’t know. Cache-fail, couldn’t find it anywhere. I don’t know where it was. Looking at the log on the iBore I think it may have been moved a number of times or even washed out to sea. Boo hiss…..

The graffiti also featured the tags of 91Boom, who seems to have written on literally most things on the island along with his chum 93Panic. Rather than being skilled street artists though, they just rudely scrawl their names on like obsessive flatmates labelling Tupperware containers in the fridge. Slackers – they could at least draw the occasional rude picture or write “If you read this you are gay”.

We continued on to Polis and parked up. We had a wander round in the now very arid early afternoon so we stopped off for a round of drinks and ice cream at a place called Savvas in the town square. If you need wi-fi, it is free here with the password DIMITRIS30. And good wifi it is too, emailed Suzie, she’s got a lovely dress for our trip to Spain woop woop

I had a pint of iced coffee, which was quite literally ice (cream) in a coffee. Not quite what I expected but surprisingly pleasant.

Polis has one geocache at a campsite. We had a wander round, Goldy found it and by this point he had the Geocaching bug. This was AWESOME !! with this little app I’d downloaded at the café I had the radar thingee and distance thingee, it was so cool we we’re trying to find it, found the rough area and we were trying to triangulate with Andy, Gaz and myself with our little apps on our phone, all 5 of us were searching and it all came back to the point where we’d almost started, so I climbed back up this little slope and had a look about and bingo a glimpse of white “container” was to be seen, of course I’m not going to tell you where it is exactly, that’s not the point of the game but I’d found my first one myself, most awesome. Inside were two travel bugs which Andy now has and a frog who wants to go island hopping… the UK is an island so I’ve grabbed that one and will be planting it in my first cache back home.

On the way to find it we saw a rat, he was actually quite cute.

On the way home we stopped off for supplies and then drove back to the villa for a coke float and a dip in the pool.

Oh, before I forget, I got hit with a water balloon as we drove along the main strip. Next time, I will stop and throttle the little bastard, BIG SENSE OF HUMOUR FAILURE!

In spite of this, we had a lovely, relaxing afternoon. Personally I thought the silver lining here was that all it was was a water balloon, it could have been a lot worse…

Well, we assume it was water anyway…

At the moment, I’m sitting on a sun bed, the sun is dropping in front of me and everything is well in the world.

Tonight, we have Liza’s for a mézé dinner.

2231hrs, just got in from Liza’s, crikey, €14 per head for more food than you could shake a stick at. It was a lovely meal but just tasted a bit ‘mute’. It was a perfectly good meal and very enjoyable but I don’t really know how to describe it. I’ll leave it to Gaz. Meal was nice, not to the level of Stavros’s (in Chlorakas from last year) maybe I can see if we can pop there on Sunday or Monday depending on the mood of the squad.

I’d describe the meal as “relentless”, given the conveyor belt of mostly meat that the waitress kept topping up. Most of it was quite nice, but all a wee bit bland – the sausage of death had us all stumped as to what was in it (red wine, it turned out – and most likely some less than prime cut meat if I’m honest), but prize for oddest dish was the one that looked like someone had dismantled an omelette and swept it into a small, greasy pile. Got some free wine without even having to drop Paul’s name. Unfortunately, soon realised why it was given away free.

Now coffee and I think soon to bed. Surgery (Trauma Centre on his DS) and Coffee and see what movies I have and speak to my Suzie and then to sleep to count one more off the 5 till I have her again, “have her”, yuk, bad turn of phrase,  wondering if we can sort out a Geocache now for next field trip J