Another war zone, now a tourist zone

Rico says he just clicked on the article to remind him of where Cyprus is, exactly, and discovered Seth Kugel's 'Frugal Traveler' article in The New York Times, which makes it out to be a pretty nice place:

In the northwest corner of Cyprus, on the edge of the Akamas Peninsula, is the worst tourist attraction I’ve seen this summer: the Baths of Aphrodite. “Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, used to bathe in the small pool of this natural grotto,” the official sign read. Nearby was a pretty but inconsequential pool in a grotto, which would have been a nice place to take a dip if a) it were not surrounded by gawking tourists; and b) swimming were allowed. In the ninety-degrees-plus days of Cypriot summer, this kind of tourism stunt is just intolerable.
So I promptly declared an end to my quest to use archaeological sites to better understand the myriad outside influences that have affected this Puerto Rico-size island, strategically located in the eastern Mediterranean. Cyprus had been ruled over the centuries by Hittites and Assyrians, ancient Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans, and then the Venetians and Ottomans and British, until independence in 1960. (It didn’t end there: Since 1974, the northern third has been under Turkish control in an occupation that the world, other than Turkey, does not recognize.)
I hopped into my rented Ford Fiesta, and took off into the mostly uninhabited peninsula flecked with picturesque coves, seeking a legally swimmable spot that I could designate the Baths of Seth. Skipping over the larger spots claimed by boaters and illegal campers, I found a tiny inlet surrounded by coral-like jagged rocks and floated on my back in the surprisingly buoyant water. Forget about copper riches and military might: if I ruled an ancient empire, I’d take over Cyprus just to be able to luxuriate there in peace.
To be fair, the Baths of Aphrodite are billed as a nature site, not an archaeological one. But the ancient ruins on the island are also a mixed bag. My first stop was Choirokoitia, a Neolithic settlement, where the remains of round houses date back nine millennia. It was amazing to read about it on UNESCO’s World Heritage site in an air-conditioned internet cafe, but less fun visiting the circular piles of rocks on a punishingly hot summer day.
Much better was Kourion, with its Roman-era Complex of Eustolios and the Gladiators’ House. They not only have amazingly well preserved floor mosaics, but are also under cover of sun-shielding roofs. Add the dramatically situated hilltop and sea-view ruins of the fifth-century Kourion Episcopal Basilica, and you’ve got great archaeology! (All for just 1.70 euros.)
But I came across some other downers: The Sanctuary of Aphrodite (she was born, legend has it, in the waters off southern Cyprus) was singularly boring, with only a few partial columns remaining. The Kolossi Castle in Limassol was impressive-looking, though, if you didn’t read about it beforehand, you would never know it was a thirteenth-century castle that once housed the Knights Templar, what with no pamphlets, signs, or guides available.
I had misjudged a bit: seeking to understand the foreign influences on Cyprus was not to be done just by looking at ruins. I also had to observe the island in the present tense. That lesson actually began when I arrived, through a somewhat unorthodox method: via ferry from Tasucu, Turkey, to the occupied Turkish side. After two weeks in Turkey, I had decided to spend my time on Cyprus south of the United Nations buffer zone, where most residents are Greek Cypriots. To get there from the coast, I took a shuttle bus, where a young Greek Cypriot was negotiating with the driver, a Turk from the mainland, to take her to a border crossing not on his route. When the driver finally agreed, she thanked him and praised him as being generous and kind. But when we got out of the bus and crossed the border, she turned and told her companions how much she despised him and his people. I wondered if the outsiders of other centuries had been better received.
I got some help understanding the island’s political dynamic from Joanna Kozakou, a Cypriot-American friend whom I met up with my first night in Nicosia, a city split in two by the buffer zone. Turns out I had arrived while a major news event was unfolding; there had been a huge explosion of gunpowder that had been seized two years ago from a ship heading to Gaza from Iran and stored, carelessly and inexplicably, near the nation’s largest power plant. Thirteen people died, leading to nightly protests outside the presidential palace in Nicosia.
Joanna offered to take me to the protests (and translate) so of course I went, two nights in a row. The second night, I watched what must have been tens of thousands of people listen to speaker after speaker berate the government and demand answers. “It’s one thing to die for your country,” said one speaker, quoting a mother of a victim. “It’s another thing for your country to kill you.”
Large-scale political demonstrations are incredibly rare in Cyprus, Joanna said. (The child of Greek Cypriot parents, she grew up in Virginia, and has lived on Cyprus for seven years.) Yet they went on night after night, and I realized that though the Assyrians and Egyptians had not ruled Cyprus for thousands of years, the wave of protests that swept their descendants’ countries were the inspiration for what I saw on Cyprus.
Joanna gathered her friends to take me for my first Cypriot meal, a feast of salads, skewered meats, and raw onions served at an outdoor table at To Kontosouvli (2E Kallipoleos Avenue). The highlights: shieftalies, crumbly ground pork wrapped in stomach membrane, and kontosouvli, skewered chunks of pork butt. All that was just ten euros each, with beer. Then it was off for Cypriot wine at a chic-looking but affordable wine bar, Academy 32.
Nicosia is home to the country’s principal archaeological museum, the Cyprus Museum. I’m generally allergic to museums with long shelves of urns and pots, but kudos to Cypriot potters back to the Bronze Age: they had some cool stuff going, especially in the use of animal figures prancing around on pot rims. Of particular adorableness: a martini-glass-shaped serving vessel where the liquid is poured out through a bull’s mouth and a froglike creature skims the bottom. The museum proceeds in well-documented chronological order, as Mycenean, Egyptian, and Roman influence appears in pottery and sculpture, along with photographs that show some of the items in situ, something every archaeological museum should do.
The old city is good for wandering, and though I suppose you could argue it’s run-down in parts, I liked the comfy-old-shoes feel, inside the Venetian walls. And wandering pays off with rewards like a humongous sausage, pork, and three-cheese sandwich from Petros Snacks (across the street from the Holy Archbishopric building), and the pretty streets behind the Taht-el-Kala Mosque near the buffer zone.
But I’d argue that the best thing Cyprus has to offer is its villages, which are both primally Cypriot and also influenced by outsiders. For two days of the trip, I based myself in Kathikas, a village about fifteen miles from Paphos (the largest city on the west coast, and a beach haven for the British). I had reserved a room in a traditional Cypriot home there using the Cyprus Agrotourism Company, a fantastic site listing hundreds of bed-and-breakfast-type accommodations in traditional houses around the island. It was expensive for my budget— at 52 euros a night, the summer record breaker— but one of the cheapest they had available. The place was called Michalis’ Anoyia, and was an old stone house renovated into units with traditional loft bedrooms and a living room, kitchen and bathroom downstairs. (The flower-filled balcony was especially charming.) My only complaint: no one informed me that the owners did not live in the village and that no one would be there to greet me. I had to call to find out where the key was hidden.
Kathikas was charming enough, but other villages stood out more. One of them was Lefkara, famed worldwide for its lace, painstakingly made by village women, a single item taking days or months to produce. That’s where I saw this four-generation scene: Margarita Raouna was working on one piece in her mother’s shop as her son watched his infant boy. (Lest you think this is one of those villages where the women do all the work, the men are skilled silversmiths.)
Nearby is Kato Drys, notable for its distinctive taste-before-you-buy jam store, Jar, though it was closed when I came through. (My fault, you’re supposed to call the jam master, Elli, before you show up.)
But perhaps most notable are the Byzantine painted churches in the villages of the pine-covered Troodos Mountains. Even the most church-weary traveler cannot help but admire these tiny houses of worship, in which nearly every internal wall is covered with paintings. Sure, they were impressive as artistic and religious monuments, but these churches are so cute that if they had cheeks I’d pinch the heck out of them. Many of them have affiliated (and free) museums, which display Byzantine religious art from the area. If you think that sounds dull, stop by the one in Kalopanagiotis, attached to the eleventh-century monastery of Agios Ioannis Lampadistis. That’s where a middle-aged man named Vassos Achilleos works as a caretaker, though he is much more than that. When I entered the dimly-but-artfully-lighted one-room museum, he appeared out of nowhere, startling me and then literally pulling me around to explain the works, many of which, he said, were hidden by the monks when the Ottomans invaded in the sixteenth century and were found only in 1998. His presentation was so dramatic, from whispered shouts (“Have a look!”) to nods to the works’ importance (“A Harvard professor shot five rolls of film of this!”) that it made you wonder how he was overlooked in his youth by the Cypriot film industry (and then wonder whether there is a Cypriot film industry).
Sure, the island has been affected by endless outsiders, and their influences have stuck. But, in sandwich shops and taverns, in the coves of the Akamas Peninsula, in the (over-the-top) pride about Aphrodite, and most of all, in a crazy tour guide of ancient Byzantine art in a tiny village of the Troodos Mountains, it turns out there is plenty that is just plain Cypriot.