Sometimes referred to as Avagas Gorge, it is one of the few accessible gorges in Cyprus. This gorge, formed over millions of years due to the action of the flowing river, is at the start of the Akamas area and is easily accessible even with a regular car. It is a beautiful place to visit, especially in the earlier or the later part of the day, when the light is magical, inside the gorge.
We (I and Vidhya) first went to Avakas Gorge more than 5 years ago, when we went on our own to explore Paphos with just a guide book in hand. It was tough to find Avakas Gorge then, because the guide book didn’t have any kind of directions. We went to many villages where people couldn’t understand Avakas or Avagas (leave alone Gorge!). Then, we showed the photograph of the gorge to few villagers who gave us the directions.
From Coral Bay, keep driving towards Akamas. You will also see signs for the Pafos Bird and Animal Park (which i shall write abt in another post). At one point, the sign for Akamas is towards a road on the right. Take this right turn (until then, you would have driven straight only). The road is paved for around a 100 metres, then it becomes a earthern road (which is quite ok to drive on). You need to travel for around a kilometre on this road until you start seeing the vast expanses of the Akamas Coast on your left. Then you will come to a place where the “road” widens and looks like the first image below. On the right, you will also see a stone marked “Viklari, the marked castle”, actually an restaurant (i guess so, never been there). The road to the right takes you to Avakas Gorge.
The road to the right looks bad, but is accessible to ordinary cars, though a bit tricky at times with one side being a steep drop to the canyon floor. That is me, guiding a friend through the rocky terrain. But, things have improved over the past few years maybe because of the running of E4, the European long distance trail close to Avakas. The road condition is still the same, but there is a parking lot near the start of the walk with picnic benches and running water. But, it is good that the roads have not been paved because it is this remoteness which adds to the beauty of this place. From the parking lot, it is around a 30 minute walk to the gorge.
The first time we went to Avakas, we walked for around 20-25 minutes and didn’t see anything resembling a gorge. We saw a couple coming back and asked them about it. They said that they had been another 100 metres, but didn’t see anything and hgence were walking back. But, we decided to press on. We didn’t drive over a 100 kilometres from limassol for nothing. At probably the 110th metre, the gorge started!
If you are going in winter/spring, be ready to walk in flowing water, as the gorge is actually a river and when we went there few weeks back, it was quite slushy in places and we had to do quite a bit of jumping around in order to save our shoes from the water.
The evening sunlight and the spring colours gave some very good photo ops.
The brave have lot of opportunities to get adventurous and try their rock climbing skills on the steep slopes of the gorge.
Once you enter the gorge, the light reduces drastically and it can get a bit cold too. The highlight of the gorge is a huge stone stuck between the walls of the gorge. This is the place which is often photographed and shown whenever Avakas gorge is referred to. The photos below are of the same place during various trips (different seasons, different times of the day with no manipulations of the photo) and you can see the effect of the light in these photos.
Though the walk is actually only about a 30 minutes, we spent almost 2 hours as we stopped at every possible photo opportunity.
From avakas gorge, only a short drive away is the famous lara beach. Lara Bay is famous for its nestling turtles (though I haven’t seen any of them). It is a big sandy beach, in contrast to the beaches in limassol and paphos.
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written by Rajaram S
