Cyprus Week 3 – Water Parks & Mountain Trails
Usually, Aaron and I will pick a couple of things that we want to see or do in a week so we can arrange our working hours around that. I usually prefer to get up early, get my work done and then I can switch off and do something fun in the afternoon, knowing I have done what I need to do.
So, the week began with a 6.30am alarm and we started work around 7/7.30am, Aaron went to muscle beach gym to pump some iron whilst I beavered away at my laptop. By lunchtime, we’d done everything we needed to do, and we jumped in the car heading in the direction of Governor’s Beach. The beach is named after an English governor who loved swimming in the waters there, and had his home close by during the British occupation of Cyprus (between 1878 – 1960) but I understand it is also known as Kalymnos Beach, as divers from Kalymnos Island in Greece used to dive for sponges in those waters. Our favourite Cypriots call it Governor’s Beach so I’m going with that!
We got a little bit lost, and whilst it was only 20km from Limassol, it took us around 40 minutes to get there! Not because the directions that Google kindly provided were wrong, but because there was a little bit of confusion as to where Governor’s beach actually was. It turns out that the three different bays are all collectively known as “Governor’s Beach”, whereas we thought we’d turned up at the wrong beach. We went to Palm Beach as it was a little more secluded than some of the other bays. What makes Governor’s Beach so different to the other beaches in Limassol are the bright white cliffs and rocks that protrude right into the water. The water is also quite shallow here and looks so glittery and turquoise with the sun bouncing off the chalky boulders, and it was so warm! We were surprised how much warmer it felt compared to 10 minutes down the coast. We had a lovely afternoon reading, swimming and exploring the caves, and had a cheeky drink in the beach bar too!
On Tuesday afternoon, we took a stroll along the beach path to Guaba Beach Bar. Renowned for its crazy beach parties in the height of summer (and of course, in pre-Covid times), in the day it is a great chilled place to go for a beer, enjoy the sun and have a swim on their semi-private beach – so this is exactly what we did!
On Wednesday, after work, I headed out to meet Lex and her girl friends, Gery, Nicole & Lila at a field – named after her friend Lila…Lila’s field. It’s not really named after her, but they all call it that because Lila works at the gym there and I have no idea what its real name is. It’s essentially a 5-a-side pitch with a gym and a small café too so I met them there for coffee and a catch up! I’d met lovely Gery when we visited in September last year and I had met them all in our first week at the taverna but it was so lovely to be invited for coffee and I had a fab time getting to know them a bit better and having a bit of a gossip.
Even though we had visited for a week last year, and we’ve been here for over 2 weeks, we hadn’t actually been to see the Old Town yet so we decided that this week was the week. We went in the evening so it was dark, which made it a little difficult to navigate the backstreets and most of the time we had no idea where we were going but it was really fun! We loved seeing all the bars, restaurants and beautiful, rustic old buildings and we’ve got a list of places to try out! We stopped for a coffee at a little coffee truck which seemed popular with the locals and sat outside of what I think was the town hall which was nice and relaxing. There is major café culture over here, with many people opting for a coffee or juice in the evening than heading to the pub for a beer, which is completely different to England but I guess goes hand in hand with warmer weather and outdoor living!
However, the thing that we had planned and had been looking forward to all week was our visit to Fasouri Water Park! We are going to try and visit all of the waterparks in Cyprus so we can compare, and because we love them, but as Fasouri is pretty much on our doorstep in Limassol, it was only right that it was the first one we tried – that and it closed at the weekend for the winter.
Chris and Lex told us that they preferred Fasouri to Ayia Napa Water Park because it is far less busy and attracts less tourists. Well, we can vouch for that. When we arrived, I’m pretty sure there was only us and a handful of other people – it was so quiet! However, this meant no queues and we’d already been on our first ride within 10 minutes of entering the park.
Given it was so close to the end of the season, the park was running on limited staff, so they only opened half of the slides in the morning, then after lunch, they opened the other half and closed the morning slides. There were so many fun rides, but what we loved most about Fasouri, is that there were loads of tube rides which you could go down in a pair! Old Speedy Gonzales a.k.a. Aaron, would spend his time finding ways to make us go faster down each slide, leaning left and right to try and make us go higher up the sides. On one occasion, the lifeguard sent us down the “black slide” which I’ll refer to as the death slide, given that we almost knocked each other unconscious at the end when we hit the water so hard as we exited the tube and headbutted each other. Another great ride was the Black Cannons – tubes which involved a few meters vertical drop followed by a sharp upturn, sending you flying out into the pool, usually on your bum or back resulting in a serious case of winding. No idea why, but it was one of our favourite rides!
In true greedy guts fashion, I have to mention the doughnuts there too. Freshly made, with about 100 different sauces you can put on top – sure I felt sick as a dog afterwards but enjoyed every minute with an ice coffee after a long day on the tubes! We had such a fun day, but bloody hell, we were shattered when we came home having repeatedly climbed the 100 stairs to get to each ride – but so worth it, it was so much fun!
Having slept soundly on Friday night, and having gone to bed early and sober, we woke up feeling fresh and to a message from Chris and Lex asking if we fancied going to Kaledonia Falls! Obviously we said yes and we headed over to their apartment. Given it was 30 degrees on the coast, and taking the “nature trail” part of the day very seriously, I rocked up wearing my gym shorts and a vest top with my hair tied up in pineapple fashion. Lex, looking her glamourous self, was in jeans and a top with perfect winged eyeliner making me look not only like a car crash, but also like I was going to be very cold. Turns out, it is MUCH colder in the mountains, particularly when we took a detour to Mount Olympus and the air was VERY fresh.
The falls were absolutely stunning and the trails so pretty. Lots of rocky paths, with wooden bridges crossing over the streams of water as we walked up the hill to the very top of the waterfall. It is absolutely mad that you can drive from the very dry, hot and sandy coast to a forest where everything is ridiculously luscious and green. It took us around 2 hours to climb to the top of the waterfall, where we took in the view and a few snaps and reach the car again.
Post-“hike”, we decided that we’d earnt ourselves a coffee, so Chris drove us to the ski resort in the Troodos Mountains, where we stopped at a little tavern and had a HOT coffee – because it was bloody freezing up there. Despite the chilly air, it was absolutely beautiful. Blue skies, sunny and crisp with a lovely hot coffee in hand – it was perfect! We even walked up the ski slope (currently no snow!) up toward where the ski lift would be and whilst there was no skiiers, the view was spectacular. It’s hard to comprehend that in January/February you can go skiing and walk along the beach in a day.
In the evening, after a pit stop at our favourite Chicken takeaway, Kokorakis (the most DELICIOUS chicken!) which we ate on the balcony alongside an unexpected fireworks display, courtesy of the Four Seasons Hotel, I headed out to a club called Rumours with Lex for Nicole’s birthday and Aaron went to Chris & Lex’s place to watch the boxing. I had soo much fun but alas, vodka is not my friend and I’m sure it’ll come as no surprise to you that one of us felt much, much worse than the other the next day and that Sunday, unfortunately became a “just get through it” day. Could be worse though, we spent it topping up the tan on the beach and Aaron took care of me, bringing me drinks, snacks and sympathy which I very much didn’t deserve! That being said, I’m looking forward to waking up tomorrow and feeling like the old Meg again!
Can’t wait for more fun things next week, with hopefully less hangovers. Come back next week to read all about our fourth week in Cyp!
Love,
Meg xx
