Cyprus

Dec1/23

It was a lovely day in Cyprus today. We had a very calm sea day yesterday with much relaxing.

Cyprus was the first stop in Paul’s First missionary journey with Barnabas, who was a Jew born in Cyprus. Acts 13 tells the story of their landing on the east side of the island and travelling through to the west side. Our guide told us that tradition says that they had a guide to take them through the Troodos mountains. We didn’t know that when we started our day today.

We signed up for a ship excursion, and our guides took us in a comfy bus to the Troodos mountains. We started our hike at 1500m in elevation, and we enjoyed some beautiful nature.

The trail was mostly large rocks with dead leaves on the rocks, and with the recent rain, it was quite slippery at times.

Mountain stream

We had to ford the mountain stream a few times, but no one in our group of 48 was injured that I know of.

Thankfully, we started at the top of the hike and descended to 1200 m. It took us around two hours. There was a lovely waterfall partway down.

Our tour bus met us at the bottom and then took us to a quaint village hotel, which would be comparable to something in Radium Hot Springs. We enjoyed a light lunch on the terrace and got to soak up the autumn sunshine. The tourist village of Platres had many unique looking hotels. Ours was called the New Helvetia Hotel which is Greek for New Switzerland Hotel, and it was over 100 years old. There are two ski hills which we were told are quite busy once the snow arrives. We were lucky it hadn’t arrived yet.

The village of Omodos was our next stop, and we were able to spend about 45 minutes there. There was a monastery and a church, which supposedly had relics: the skull of St Philip, the rope that tied Jesus when he was being persecuted, and a splinter of wood from Jesus’ cross. I took a peek at the ornate church and then strolled through the village.