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Cyprus in August is definitely a great place to chill out by the pool, heading for a swim whenever you get too hot. However, it's not a great place and time to head out on explorer treks -- at least, it isn't for me. I'd noted that on Saturday and Sunday I hadn't needed to shower what seemed like every couple of hours to cool down and wash off accumulated sweat. Neither had I needed to change out of one set of soaking clothes into another set of soon-to-be-soaking clothes. Perhaps, I thought, I'm getting used to the heat?
Utter nonsense. What I had been doing was avoiding the heat. Get up at 7.15am. Breakfast. Swimming Pool for three hours. Back to room. Read or check emails. Write. Nap. Get up. Pool. Evening stroll down to Mike's or the Green Corner Café. Meal. Stroll, coffee at hotel bar by the swimming pool. Sleep. Get up. Rinse & repeat.
So, hardly the raw material for a magnificent diary opus. On saturday night (as Facebook readers will be aware) I had an unexpected encounter with a rather large cockroach. This didn't disturb me much. Indeed I took three pictures of it. I then went downstairs, camera in hand to provide visual evidence, prepared to cheerfully inform the receptionist that I had a cockroach, at which point she would ask my room number, I would give her my room number, she would tell me that the disinfectant people would be round in the morning, I would smile and say thank you, and that would be the end of it.
Except it didn't pan out that way. She just looked at me as I showed her the picture of the cockroach, and said "they are everywhere". Huh? Had I been transplanted back into 1980s East Germany by mistake? Did this (Russian) receptionist leran her trade at the feet of her grandmother, who had jealously guarded the light switches and the (probably broken) lifts on the fifth floor of a Moscow Hotel sometime in the 1960s?
Stunned, I simply said "this is not good", and returned to my room. Only when I arrived and put down the camera did the red mist descend and I decided that I wasn't going to take this shit from anyone. So, down I stormed, and said (very loudly) "Listen, if I tell you that I have a GIANT COCKROACH (those words said loudly enough that I suspect they were heard at the next hotel down the road) in my room, you do not tell me 'they are everywhere'. You do something about it!" (More loud comments along the lines of "You should be ashamed of yourself" and "You are a disgrace to your profession" followed). The poor woman recoiled as if I'd actually struck her. Or, more likely, as if I'd turned out to be the local communist party apparatchik in disguise. Presumably it had by now occurred to her that telling a guest that his encounter with a cockroach in his hotel room was a run-of-the-mill event that happened all the time might not have been the wisest of moves if such a comment were repeated by the guest to the hotel management.
Anyway, net result was that she begged for my room number, and the following morning they sent up a disinfectant gang that might have been the lead roles in the Russian remake of Ghostbusters. Craig, in the room next door, said that evening when I informed him of the details of what happened, "Oh, so that was what that smell was".
The legendary cockroach.
Prior to this unfortunate sequence of events we had had a lovely meal in a Chinese restaurant (Mr Liu's, Tomb of the Kings, recommended), harking back to one of the good things about the UK in the 1970s - ultra-large portions in Chinese and Indian restaurants. Craig had a starter and a main course with rice, while Amanda and I had a set meal for two, and the dishes were all enormous. I think that we managed to eat a third of it, despite the fact that it was delicious.
Jamie and Lee had spent Saturday driving 300km, many of them in the wrong direction and some of them in reverse, while touring the west coast of Cyprus and seeking the Troodhos Mountains. Their rented small 4x4 jeeplet had seen better days but, as Jamie said, it did the job. They nearly ran over a Cyprus whipsnake on their travels -- probably about six feet long, from the pictures of it.
I've spent the last three days keeping up with the swimming, and this morning I reaped the rewards by achieving my targbet of 10 lengths (120m) non-stop. I managed 48 lengthsin total this morning, on top of about 64 yesterday (two sessions, morning and afternoon) and 57 the day before (also two sessions). The downside is that my eyes are starting to sting and are definitely getting irritated. Goggles would be useful (can you google goggles? Well, yes, obviously you can. But iot's a nice alliteration). Also, for the morning shift, the sun is irritatingly positioned in that it shines straight in my eyes as I turn my head to the right and out of the water in order to breathe. It's not easy to swim lengths without opening your eyes either underwwater (stinging) or above water (blinded), but the irritation from the chemicals in the water and the very bright sunlight make it difficult to do anything else.
Last night (Sunday) we went to a rather slowly-run quiz at the Green Corner. We came third, five points off the top spot. But 80 questions plus a picture round, with a question master who really took too long between questions and rounds, made for an 8.30pm start and 11.30pm finish. Compare and contrast with the Nobody Inn, where it's done and dusted in 90 minutes (prompt 8pm start) and by 11.30pm I'm back at home checking Engel's vituperative comments on Twitter.
The Green Corner.
This morning I managed to get up by 6.50am and do the first half of a projected four-mile walk. I walked down to the Harbour, turned right and kept to the coastal walk, with Nea Paphos on my right.
The start of the coastal walk. Paphos is putting on an operat at the beginning of September, with this building as the backdrop to an open stage.
Then, when I reached the beach where I took the sunset photos, I made my way back to the main road. It was about two miles in all I reckon and took me about an hour (I stopped to take a few photos, but tinypic is being very irritating today -- indeed, internet connections to everything seem unreliable, no matter which connection I use).
The coastal walk. Pleasant, but not inspiring like the walk around Cap Ferrat.
I hope before the end of the week to get up earlier and manage a five-mile walk further north, passing the Tombs of the Kings on my right as I head north along the caost to another beach. But even by 8am the heat and humidity is getting unpleasant.
Picture taken at 7.30am. Sun was already fairly aggressive, but coastline was pretty (albeit not with many things to photograph). Saw some birds! Also saw a few joggers. I suspect that jogging any later in the day would be fatal.
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Utter nonsense. What I had been doing was avoiding the heat. Get up at 7.15am. Breakfast. Swimming Pool for three hours. Back to room. Read or check emails. Write. Nap. Get up. Pool. Evening stroll down to Mike's or the Green Corner Café. Meal. Stroll, coffee at hotel bar by the swimming pool. Sleep. Get up. Rinse & repeat.
So, hardly the raw material for a magnificent diary opus. On saturday night (as Facebook readers will be aware) I had an unexpected encounter with a rather large cockroach. This didn't disturb me much. Indeed I took three pictures of it. I then went downstairs, camera in hand to provide visual evidence, prepared to cheerfully inform the receptionist that I had a cockroach, at which point she would ask my room number, I would give her my room number, she would tell me that the disinfectant people would be round in the morning, I would smile and say thank you, and that would be the end of it.
Except it didn't pan out that way. She just looked at me as I showed her the picture of the cockroach, and said "they are everywhere". Huh? Had I been transplanted back into 1980s East Germany by mistake? Did this (Russian) receptionist leran her trade at the feet of her grandmother, who had jealously guarded the light switches and the (probably broken) lifts on the fifth floor of a Moscow Hotel sometime in the 1960s?
Stunned, I simply said "this is not good", and returned to my room. Only when I arrived and put down the camera did the red mist descend and I decided that I wasn't going to take this shit from anyone. So, down I stormed, and said (very loudly) "Listen, if I tell you that I have a GIANT COCKROACH (those words said loudly enough that I suspect they were heard at the next hotel down the road) in my room, you do not tell me 'they are everywhere'. You do something about it!" (More loud comments along the lines of "You should be ashamed of yourself" and "You are a disgrace to your profession" followed). The poor woman recoiled as if I'd actually struck her. Or, more likely, as if I'd turned out to be the local communist party apparatchik in disguise. Presumably it had by now occurred to her that telling a guest that his encounter with a cockroach in his hotel room was a run-of-the-mill event that happened all the time might not have been the wisest of moves if such a comment were repeated by the guest to the hotel management.
Anyway, net result was that she begged for my room number, and the following morning they sent up a disinfectant gang that might have been the lead roles in the Russian remake of Ghostbusters. Craig, in the room next door, said that evening when I informed him of the details of what happened, "Oh, so that was what that smell was".
The legendary cockroach.
Prior to this unfortunate sequence of events we had had a lovely meal in a Chinese restaurant (Mr Liu's, Tomb of the Kings, recommended), harking back to one of the good things about the UK in the 1970s - ultra-large portions in Chinese and Indian restaurants. Craig had a starter and a main course with rice, while Amanda and I had a set meal for two, and the dishes were all enormous. I think that we managed to eat a third of it, despite the fact that it was delicious.
Jamie and Lee had spent Saturday driving 300km, many of them in the wrong direction and some of them in reverse, while touring the west coast of Cyprus and seeking the Troodhos Mountains. Their rented small 4x4 jeeplet had seen better days but, as Jamie said, it did the job. They nearly ran over a Cyprus whipsnake on their travels -- probably about six feet long, from the pictures of it.
I've spent the last three days keeping up with the swimming, and this morning I reaped the rewards by achieving my targbet of 10 lengths (120m) non-stop. I managed 48 lengthsin total this morning, on top of about 64 yesterday (two sessions, morning and afternoon) and 57 the day before (also two sessions). The downside is that my eyes are starting to sting and are definitely getting irritated. Goggles would be useful (can you google goggles? Well, yes, obviously you can. But iot's a nice alliteration). Also, for the morning shift, the sun is irritatingly positioned in that it shines straight in my eyes as I turn my head to the right and out of the water in order to breathe. It's not easy to swim lengths without opening your eyes either underwwater (stinging) or above water (blinded), but the irritation from the chemicals in the water and the very bright sunlight make it difficult to do anything else.
Last night (Sunday) we went to a rather slowly-run quiz at the Green Corner. We came third, five points off the top spot. But 80 questions plus a picture round, with a question master who really took too long between questions and rounds, made for an 8.30pm start and 11.30pm finish. Compare and contrast with the Nobody Inn, where it's done and dusted in 90 minutes (prompt 8pm start) and by 11.30pm I'm back at home checking Engel's vituperative comments on Twitter.
The Green Corner.
This morning I managed to get up by 6.50am and do the first half of a projected four-mile walk. I walked down to the Harbour, turned right and kept to the coastal walk, with Nea Paphos on my right.
The start of the coastal walk. Paphos is putting on an operat at the beginning of September, with this building as the backdrop to an open stage.
Then, when I reached the beach where I took the sunset photos, I made my way back to the main road. It was about two miles in all I reckon and took me about an hour (I stopped to take a few photos, but tinypic is being very irritating today -- indeed, internet connections to everything seem unreliable, no matter which connection I use).
The coastal walk. Pleasant, but not inspiring like the walk around Cap Ferrat.
I hope before the end of the week to get up earlier and manage a five-mile walk further north, passing the Tombs of the Kings on my right as I head north along the caost to another beach. But even by 8am the heat and humidity is getting unpleasant.
Picture taken at 7.30am. Sun was already fairly aggressive, but coastline was pretty (albeit not with many things to photograph). Saw some birds! Also saw a few joggers. I suspect that jogging any later in the day would be fatal.
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