Cyprus Holiday, Travel and Touring Guide.
Cyprus's Paphos, Troodos, Akamas and Beaches - Holiday, Walks and Photos Guides.
Apart from Cyprus's lovely beaches there are loads of hiking and sightseeing on offer whilst on holiday in Cyprus - from hill walking in the Troodos mountains to coastal hiking and beach visiting around the Peninsulas and Gorges.
Our Cyprus Travel and Holiday Guides and Photos are based around our 2 weeks holiday in Cyprus during mid September 2005 having got ourselves a reasonably good late deal for a self catering apartment near Paphos - not always easy to find as most Cyprus holiday accommodation seems to be hotels.
We always prefer self-catering when on holiday - for a start it's
cheaper than using hotels and since we are usually out all day hiking etc. we do
not need/require lots of facilities - and secondly you get a fridge and can thus
have the very necessary iced water/drinks to take walking.
This topic covers general things we found about Cyprus including eating and
transport and so on as well as various places we visited in the Paphos area. For
specific locations where we did our walks whilst in Cyprus (with descriptions)
please see our Cyprus Walks - note these pages also contain many photographs of the
areas concerned so may be useful to see what is in a particular area. Our guide
about the archaeological sites which can be visited whilst on holiday in Cyprus
and a series of photographs showing off some of Cyprus's lovely beaches can also
be picked from our Home Page.
As always seems to be the case with us our holidays are about getting as much walking in as
possible and taking lots of photos whilst doing so but we do like a little bit
of sightseeing as well and it's easy to spend hours wandering around some of
Cyprus's Archaeological sites -
the sites around around the Pafos area are excellent. We enjoy visiting
beaches and coves particularly which are a little remote - and because of the
effort to get to them often deserted - and are not covered with chairs and
things - i.e. more on the wild side where you can strip off and enjoy some natural
swimming and sunbathing if you want. There are plenty of naturist freindly
beaches to be found on Cyprus if you care to look. We have a separate page
showing some of the beaches around Paphos and Akamas in particular which can be
found via our Home Page. Please note
there are no photographs or content on this or any of our web sites which are
unsuitable viewing for people of any age.
Below and on our separate walks and beaches pages we hope to provide some information about Cyprus and what we did and found there. Cyprus is of course a large island so in no way could we cover very much of it - our hiking instructions/ideas info mostly concern walks we did around Paphos, Coral Bay, Polis, Lara, Latsi, Akamas and around Cyprus's brilliant Troodos mountains.
Paphos. Paphos is one of Cyprus's major holiday resorts and has
it's own airport which is located a few kms's to the south of the town - so for
anyone holidaying in the area the first good thing is that transfers are pretty
fast. Mid-September is still within the main part of the tourist season so
Paphos is pretty busy and also prices for just about everything are not at their
best from a visitor's point of view. There are lots of restaurants in and around
the front as well as quite a few "leather" and other touristy type shops, banks
and also a few supermarkets. There are also plenty of bars and a more dedicated
"noisy" area which is full of very loud music bars all trying to outdo each
other to produce even louder music.
A bus service runs between the Port
area and Coral Bay and is pretty good - with no.10 and no.15 services running
around every 15 minutes both ways right up to the last bus at 11pm (the bus fare
was a flat 70 cents). There are also lots of taxis to be had - as usual agreeing
a price before using one is essential - the price seemed to be around one Cyprus
pound (or September 2005 exchange rate 1.20 UK Pounds) per kilometre.
Car hire is not particularly cheap on Cyprus
but then we are probably more used to the type of prices you can find on the
Greek Islands - with full insurance we had to pay 30 Cyprus pounds per day for
an Astra. On reflection we probably should have sorted out a hire-car before we
left England as it was quite a "mess-about" trying to do it once we arrived in
Cyprus.
Food and Wine.
The "harbour-front" restaurants at Pafos we found to be a little more expensive
than if you wandered back a few streets but overall wherever we ate the food was
nicely cooked and there was quite a lot of it. We did think the food to be a
little expensive in Paphos with meals averaging around 7.50 Cyprus Pounds for a
main course and starters and puddings around 2 to 3 pounds. We did not find the
wine to be that exciting, local wine being around 7 pounds a bottle
(75cl).(apparently Cyprus wine is best in the Spring so we were told at one
restaurant). We ended up using 4 different places to eat - one Italian, one
Indian and two "Taverna type" ones which were of course Greek owned and run.
Paphos has one really huge archaelogical site which you enter near the Fort which we found to be really interesting - lots of mosaics and Roman houses and baths etc. but if the weather is warm remember to take a hat and a bottle of water - also another site called the Tombs of the Kings is located on the edge of the Town - this has extensive rock cut burial chambers to look at. Please take a look at our General Photos where you can find quite a few photographs from these archaeological sites plus lots more.
Pafos coastline up to Cape Drepano including Coral Bay. A
main road goes right along the coast as far as Cape Drepano - this road is
incredibly busy with loads of buses, coaches, taxis, lorries and cement mixers
as well as cars using it from early morning to late at night (well not the
lorries late at night of course). The reason for the heavy traffic is the
incredible amount of building going on right along the coast - every spare bit
of ground seems to have houses and villas being built on it and we have never
seen to many road-side bill-boards advertising these houses as here. Coupled to
this there are quite a lot of hotels along the coast too.
Near the Archaeological Site is the Pafos Municipal beach which is sandy, and
there are various rocky coves along the coast - just as the road nears Coral Bay
there is a longish mostly pebble beach and then Coral Bay's main beaches a bit
further on. The main road ends at Cape Drepano where there are several bits of
beach as well as a nice church.
Cape Drepano up to Lara and then up a bit more.
Just before getting to Cape Drepano/Agios Georgios a road goes off on the right
- this is a tarmac but smaller road which eventually becomes an unmade road as
it heads past the Avakas Gorge entrance and on to Lara Turtle beach and then
further up the Akamas Peninsula.
This is a favourite place for 4WD folk to play - the track is full of sometimes
quite big potholes especially at the start and as far as the Lara beach Taverna
turnoff. However you do not need a 4WD - we went quite happily right up to
Kannoudia Islet using our Astra - you just have to drive slowly and not wreck
the underneath on the potholes.
This is a favourite place for 4WD folk to play - the track is full of sometimes
quite big potholes especially at the start and as far as the Lara beach Taverna
turnoff. However you do not need a 4WD - we went quite happily right up to
Kannoudia Islet using our Astra - you just have to drive slowly and not wreck
the underneath on the potholes.
There is another really nice sandy beach just after Lara beach and then various pebble beaches to be found as you continue along. On maps the track is shown as ending by Kannoudia Islet but in fact it does continue on along the coast - there is also a track junction near here which takes you across the Peninsula to Loutra - we have walked this area and don't think it is at all possible in a car and some bits would be iffy even in a good 4WD unless you are experienced driving such - very rocky and very slippery/steep scree descents/ascents etc. even the goats were being careful in places....
Loutra, Latsi (Lakki), Polis and Pomos. Loutra is the location
of another Aphrodite type site of interest - this time it's her bath apparently.
Lots of people come here to see this - we were there primarily to do a couple of
walks into the Akamas hills and to walk up to the end of the island at Cape
Akamas. There are several trails which start from Loutra and because of Ms.
Aphrodite there is a restaurant and a large car park available. In addition
there is a quite large camp site quite near the Bath.
Between Loutra and Latsi there is again plenty of Villa building going on - Latsi itself has several restaurants and two reasonably sized supermarkets by the roadside - the beach is also quite extensive and has sun-chairs and things available for hire We decided to continue along the coast to Pachyammos and have a look at the Turkish border guards - first place of note to go through is Polis - yet another place with villa new-builds in full swing - then we followed the coast on up to Pomos and finally to Pachyammos - the road goes right alongside the coast and borders an almost continuous pebble beach - with hardly a soul on it.
Kato Platres, Troodos, Mount Olympus, Mon. Trooditissa.
We do not know much about Platres, we just went via it to get
up to Troodos for our walks. It does appear to have a lot of accommodation in
the shape of chalets to cater for the ski season - we talked to some people we
met whilst walking in the area who were staying in Plates and they said the
place was dead during the evenings. I know that of the 3 times we drove through
around 9 a.m. there were already lots of coaches and cars around with tourists
meandering about looking at something or other (in the middle of the road of
course), and that on our way back around 6 p.m. there was hardly a soul to be seen.
Moni Trooditissa is probably a really lovely monastery - sadly
they don't seem to like anyone other than Greek Cypriots as is made quite clear
from the red worded posters on the entrance gates saying anyone else can bog off
- this was quite disappointing particularly to my wife who likes looking at
monasteries and churches but accepts that perhaps sometimes you cannot go
completely inside an actual monastery. At Trooditissa you cannot even look at
the building apart from the walls going alongside the road on one side - there
is however a nice walk which starts from here so all was not lost.
Mount Olympus is simply reached by walking up a road (or
driving up it of course) - we went up to the top as
part of a nice walk and hikers do need to get to highest points if
possible - height we measured on our GPS was 1947 metres. We had an ice cream
and then a chat with the soldier guarding the military site and that was about
it - the views are pretty good from the top though. At a guess Cyprus must
boast one of the highest golf tees in the Med. - presumably the round white
object was a super golf ball? woops not meant to mention it of course... and we
certainly did not take a photo whilst up there. However my wife did get a nice
photo of possibly something similar from further round our walk.
Troodos Village - well it was quite a mess when we visited - we had gone there since one of walks started from the car park. There were several stalls flogging something or other and loads of lorries and bull-dozers and tarmac and stuff all over the place - it does look as if some money has been allocated and the place is being tarted up - does sort of need it. There is a large car park available on the other side of the village and this is also where several walker's trails start - just before getting to Troodos there is also a large Visitor Centre and car park.
Several other Cyprus places visited - Pissouri Bay, Akrotiri's beaches and Episkopi (Kurio, Apollo Tempel and Kolossi). Pissouri is located about half way between Pafos and Limassol - as you travel down to the beach the whole area seems to be covered in newly built or being built villas - every inch of it. Down by the sea there is a reasonably sized car park but this is used of course by the beach people so parking spaces are not easily found.
On the road from Pissouri to Episkopi can be found the Apollo Temple and further along the Kurio - the latter is very interesting to walk round. On the other side of Episkopi is the Kolossi - this again is worth a visit - you can walk inside and go up to the top of this massively thick walled building and there are also other bits being excavated in the compound.
We have several other travel and holiday websites which may be of interest:-
Tour Guides for India India - Goa and the
Golden Triangle (all about holidays in India and touring Indian Tombs Temples and Forts)
New Zealand Travel Guides New Zealand
North and South Islands - about holidays and travelling in
New Zealand
Holiday Guides for Greek Islands + Athens Quite a
few Greek Islands are covered on our Greece Holiday and Travel Guides plus a topic on touring Athens
and it's ancient sites.
Holidays in The Far East Hong Kong, Bali, Singapore,
Bangkok Thailand and Cambodia (Siem Reap,
Angkor Wat etc and Phnom Penh) - holiday and travel guides out in the Far East.
Egypt Touring and Vacation Guides Touring
Egypt - Sharm el Sheikh for sunshine and Luxor, Cairo and Aswan for fantastic ancient sites.
Visiting England - canals walks nature churches England's wildflowers,
lovely old churches, beautiful canals and many walks to enjoy if visiting or on
holiday in England.
Holidays on The Canary Isles Holiday
Guide for The Canary Islands of windy Fuerteventura, volcanic Lanzarote and Gran Canaria.
Portugal Algarve Holiday Guide Holiday guides
for the far south of Europe on The Algarve in Southern Portugal
Touring, Holidays and Travel in Vietnam.
Vietnam Touring Guides
See our Resources topic if you wish to email us plus links and also a notice about our website and privacy policy.
Good Websites about Cyprus:-
Sunflower Books Visit their site -
We always take a Sunflower book if available.
Walking the Greek Islands Harald has
a section on Cyprus plus lots of links plus stuff about Greece
Cyprus Travel Secrets Your
friendly insider guide to Cyprus. Discover the secrets only the locals know.
Luxurious mountain bike and walking
holidays Holidays, quality bike hire and guiding.
Greece Holidays