Harish and Anith took many of my photos and put them on top of a Cyprus Map as a collage. Must have been lot of work. This is the photo which is currently the wallpaper on my laptop. You can find a higher resolution picture (2.5 MB) here.
An earthquake of magnitude 4.5 on the Richter scale shook Cyprus on August 25th (Tuesday). The epicentre was pretty close to Limassol, occurring near Amathus. But, nothing much happened because of this, just that people were shaken up a bit!
In fact, Cyprus is very close to a highly seismic zone. There is a major fault running through (or very near to) Cyprus. You can actually see the fault. If you go to lady’s mile beach (on the road from My Mall), you turn right at the T-junction to go to Akrotiri lake whereas to the left, the road stops. If you wade into the beach from just to the right of the t-junction, you should see a drop of a feet or so on the sea floor within a few metres from the shore. This is a faultline. This goes in a diagonal direction towards the sea , so goes further in as you go on lady’s mile beach towards Akrotiri. I accidentally noticed this. Once i was snorkelling close to the shore (close – very close as i dont know the ABCs of swimming) and i drifted off a bit. Suddenly, i saw the sea floor much deeper than i would have liked it to be. I panicked and waded towards the shore. Then i noticed the sharp drop on the floor.
Cyprus has had its share of mild earthquakes before. In the late 90s, there was a medium intensity earthquake, the effects of which can be seen on some of the old residential apartments on the beach road. I hope that there are no after-shocks of this earthquake, except the artificial ones to be created by the Israelis!!
Few questions from a Cyprus quiz i conducted at my place of work recently. Leave your answers in the comments. Answers will be updated in a week’s time.
It is carnival time in Cyprus and that means revelry at its best on the streets of Limassol. Colourful costumes, out-of-the-world head-gears and bursting party poppers along with the beautiful cyprus spring makes it one the best times of the year to be in Cyprus. See photos of the various costumes on display from past years here. The king’s carnival, the official start of the carnival happened on thursday. This was the first king’s parade i missed 
. But, you can see photos from the king’s parade of 2007 here.
Schedule of the Limassol Carnival 2009 (The main highlights)
Sunday: Feb 22 :
11.30a.m. Children’s Carnival Parade
Starting Point: Ayias Zonis Str. (ESSO Service Station).
Finishing: End of Anexartisias
Tuesday: Feb 24
8.30p.m. “Tuesday’s Carnival Fiesta”, Medieval Castle Square
The Lemesos Municipality invites all young and adults to come in disguised costumes and participate in different carnival merrymaking with music and dancing.
Sunday: March 1
1.30p.m. Grand Carnival Parade
Archbishop Makarios III Avenue
Starting Point: Ayios Nikolaos Round About
Ending: Ayias Sofia’s Traffic Lights
Floats shall begin to gather from 8.30a.m. along the Makarios III Avenue, from Enaerios traffic lights to Ayios Nikolaos Round About. The parade will proceed along Makarios III Avenue up to Ayias Sofias Traffic Lights.
8.30p.m. Farewell Carnival Fiesta – Medieval Castle Square
The Carnival will end with a grand outdoor Carnival Ball with disguised costumes and music.
Carnival Costume Competition – Awards for the best three.
Fireworks start at 9.00p.m.
Enjoy!
When i was in Seattle, i ordered a lot of photo-related products like photobooks, photocards, photomugs etc from snapfish, shutterfly and many such stores. During one such order, I was given a free 8*10 print. So, i chose to choose some of the pictures taken in Cyprus and ordered a print. The individual photos in the picture below are clickable and they will take you to the relevant post about that place.
The photos in the picture above: (Starting from top-left, going left-right and top-down)
The most prominent mountain-top visible once one enters Cyprus through Larnaca, stavravouni monastery (sometimes spelt as Stavrovouni Monastery on road signs) is the oldest monastery in Cyprus (Kykkos monastery is the most famous though).
.JPG "Stavravouni Monastery Cyprus")
It is perched on top of a 700 m hill almost equidistant from larnaca, limassol and nicosia. There is only one tarmac road to the top of Stvravouni and it is from the section of the Limassol-Nicosia highway.
Almost 7 years back, my parents were here to visit me. I was just 6 months old in Cyprus and hadn’t travelled much. I decided to take them to Stavravouni. I have always seen this big mountain on the way from Larnaca and assumed that there would be an exit from the limassol-larnaca highway. it wasn’t to be and what should have been a 30 minute drive turned into a 2 hr drive. Yes, you can get lost in this small island 
Few points to note:
.JPG "Stavravouni Monastery Cyprus")
Of course, the ladies (and the guys too) can visit the church at the other end of the parking lot.
.JPG "Stavravouni Monastery Cyprus")
I heard that there is a trekking trail to the top which avoids the roads. I am yet to go on this trail. Once i do that, i shall update info on that too.
As far as food choices are concerned, I can be described as “the opposite of a gourmet” (If such a word exists). I am very picky about the food i eat and 99.99% of the time, i would pick vegetarian Indian food over any other and within this classification of vegetarian Indian food itself, I am very selective. So, this makes me a very bad company to anyone wanting to eat out. Vidhya has managed to put up with me somehow in this area.
So, for a person with such tastes, I surprised myself when i started liking the traditional cypriot meze in one of the restaurants in Lofou village. I was introduced to it by our gang after lot of convincing that i can manage with the french fries there. It turned out that i ate lot more than just the fries.
Lofou village is a short drive away from Limassol. You have to go on the troodos road and once you cross the Alassa park you will see an exit to lofou. From that exit, it is another 10 km drive. This part of the drive is on high plateaus and the views there are worth the drive. Lofou was once abandones, but now it contains a restaurant and few other agro-touristic homes. The village is small and it characterised by typical cypriot village architecture. A walk around the village will help in digesting the huge amount of food which you will eat in the meze
.JPG "Lofou village cyprus meze")
.JPG "lofou village cyprus meze")
.JPG "lofou village cyprus meze")
Once you near the village, there are clear signs pointing you to the “traditional cyprus tavern”. There is as such no entrance to the village. Once you take a left turn from the main road, you will see a small right which goes into the village. Here you can park the anywhere or there is a big parking place a little ahead on the right just opposite a schaool playground.
I love the setting of the entire eating area. We usually sit outside which is covered by tarpaulin and surrounded by plants. This place is always cool even in summer. Once it started drizzling and we moved to the centre table (outside) and the ambience was amazing, with rain falling all round us and us gorging on wonderful food!
.JPG "Lofou Village Cyprus meze")
.JPG "lofou village cyprus meze")
.JPG "lofou village cyprus meze")
We usually order the vegetarian meze for all of us. The meat eaters just order an extra non-veg dish. I never knew that you could so many vegetarian dishes in a restaurant in Cyprus. I wanted to count and photograph each of the items when i last visited, but i got so engrossed in eating that i forgot to do that. The list of items served to include (but not limited to) pita with cheese, haloumi cheese, fries, good salads, aubergine, mushrooms, okra (lady’s finger) ,pourgouri, tahini, humus and many others totalling around 28 in number. Our gang goes to many restarants, but we never experience the “fullness” at any other restaurant. On an average, we spend 3-4 hrs whenever we come here. it seems that the desserts are the best of them all (i don’t eat any of these). Lassanaki (dunno how to spell it) is the best.
Of course, you can drown all the food you eat in local wine!
.JPG "Lofou village cyprus meze")
If you want to eat traditional cypriot food in a traditional environment, then this place is a must-visit!
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*Petrichor – The pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell. [From petro- (rock), from Greek petros (stone) + ichor (the fluid that is supposed to flow in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology)
