The Furthest We've Gone...

Yesterday we reached the geographic zenith of the trip.  This bridge - crossed in the far reaches of Lappish Norway, on our way from one part of Finland to another - sits at 70°198947 N. The name of this place is Tana Bru.  There were a few low buildings, a store, leafless trees, grey skies, the swift Tana river and a small, wet pull off where we could park.  From there, our road turned back down towards the equator.
The experience had us thinking about the other extreme points of the trip, where we'd been the furthest east, west and south.  Here's our little cartography project.

It seems that we always reach these geographic extremes during cloudy, dismal weather.  It was a cold, windy day on the southern coast of Cyprus when we walked the Limassol shoreline, at 34°664911 N.  There were stacks of unused beach chairs and faded signs for "ombrellas," a few fishermen, rocky sand, strip clubs and blank holiday apartments.  Cyprus certain can feel like the sunny south, but in those earliest days of March we had no desire to swim.  From the beach, it's about two hundred and forty miles south to Port Fuad, Egypt.

Looking for lighthouses and glaciers, we rounded the western tip of Iceland's Snæfellsnes Peninsula, which is the furthest west we reached in our westernmost country (-23°973541 E).  The Azores are more westerly, but we don't intend to go.
The land out on the Snæfellsnes was dominated by volcanic rock and bright-green grass.  The waterside cliffs were full of bird nests, the air was full of mist.  It's a land of myth, and the local volcano was chosen by Jules Verne as the entry point into the center of the earth.

More than three thousand miles east, on the polluted shores of the Caspian sea, Baku was our other longitudinal extreme.  Oil derricks and harbor cranes hung in the sky, the city was gnawing itself to pieces.  Azerbaijan isn't a pretty place, and the Caspian was tar black in the January light.
The culture there is as much Asian as European, a mixture of Islam, Russia and its own independent fire.  Taking a night train overland through the dessert from Georgia, we awoke to grey scrub and brown earth.  The sea and the city, when we got there, seemed like the last place on earth.
As nearly as we can figure it, we reached 49°887371 E.

So, if these were our poles, where was the middle?  After some quick calculations, it seems that the east-west, north-south midpoint of our trip lands at 52°431929 N, 12°956915 E, which is about ten miles west of Berlin.
We've actually been to one (dubiously accurate) geographic center of Europe, in the Belarusian town of Polotsk.  It didn't feel like the middle, though.  Berlin seems much more accurate, even if our methods are a little unscientific.

Things Cypriot People Like

KEO brand products. It started as a beer company, but since Carlsberg (made in Cyprus) is still the most popular brew on the island, KEO has ventured into all things hard: red and white wine, commanderia, ouzo, brandy. They've also made their beer more noticeable, by putting it in 630ml bottles - an absurdly large size. Their branded glasses are strangely small 10oz mugs, which only accentuate the bottle's enormity. Take that 500ml Carlsbergs! (Note: this is South Cyprus specific. In Northern Cyprus, Efes beer from Turkey was the beverage du jour).
Lunch Trucks. Especially down in Limassol, the lunch truck acted as workplace cafeteria and drive-through window. Specializing in sandwiches, burgers and sausages, they most often had a big bowl of relish and a condiment dispenser out on their counter. Some smaller trucks served only iced coffee and frappes.
This kind of lock. New and old buildings as well as countless bathroom stalls had the slide-the-pole-through-a-loop method. Probably not something that would be super noticeable to the average person, but I have a strange inability to get doors opened and closed handily. These posed a challenge.
Glyko. The Greek word 'glyko' literally translates into 'sweet,' but in Cyprus it means something altogether more specific. It's a sweet pickling of fruits and nuts which completely transforms them into a candylike treat. For example, the black glyko on the plate above is walnut - shell and all. Next to it is a clementine, complete with peel. Unique and delicious.
The Greek flag. It should go without saying that this is also a Southern Cyprus specific thing. In Northern Cyprus, you'd see the Turkish flag now and then, but mostly the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus' flag flapped away in the sky. In Southern Greece, though, you rarely even saw the Republic of Cyprus flag - only the Greek one. This was surprising because the Republic of Cyprus is not and has never been part of Greece (though there have been many historic efforts on both sides to make that the case). Still, there was ole blue and white and nary a Cypriot flag in sight.
Dried gourds. We saw a few hanging from porches in Northern Cyprus, bleaching in the sun and drying. Why? We couldn't tell. Then, in Southern Cyprus, we began to see the finished product. Traditionally, they were used to serve wine, but nowadays are more decorative.

Gypsy Kitchens: Cooking Kolokasi

Cyprus has snow. Even now, in March, people are skiing in the high Troodos. Installed in the small mountain hamlet of Silikou, our breath has been white in the evenings and we have our drinks by a blazing hearth. The cold and altitude have brought our thoughts back to hearty winter-roots and warm food. So, on a rainy day in our stone cottage, we decided to cook up a Kolokasi stew, a filling and simple Cypriot specialty. One thing that worried us: Kolokasi is poisonous.
Kolokasi is a bit of a mystery food. Better known in English as taro (or dasheen), it's extremely rare in Europe - most Taro is cultivated in southeast Asia and Malaysia, where it originated. The course roots were once popular in the Roman empire, after being introduced by way of Egypt, but as Rome declined, so too did Kolokasi. Now, it's only grown in significant quantities in two places on the European continent: the geek island of Ikaria and in Cyprus.

The first time we saw Kolokasi for sale, we actually thought they were some kind of huge mushroom.
High levels of calcium oxalate in taro give the root its toxicity, and make it inedible when raw. There are a few ways to minimize the poisonous effects - soaking the roots in cold water for 24 hours, for example. But nobody would want to eat kolokasi raw anyway, and the best way to get rid of the poison is to thoroughly cook it - just like rhubarb. Some people suggest cooking it with baking soda, but we made a mistake and added baking powder. Not that it mattered. We're still alive.
We bought our kolokasi from a man who sold them on the roadside. He had two varieties - one larger type and these small ones. It wasn't clear what the difference between them was. He was also keen on selling us potatoes instead, maybe because they're not poisonous. Declining the potatoes, we picked up a few carrots and onions.
The cooking process wasn't too difficult, just the basic peel, chop and boil technique. The skin was tough and covered with small hairs. Slime formed on the white flesh as it was cut - a kind of milky, white, slippery stuff that got all over the cutting board and our hands. It's supposedly possible to minimize this sliminess by breaking the kolokasi apart with your hands, but you'd have to be incredibly strong. The roots are denser than potatoes, and hard to get a grip on. Plus, the peel is too unappetizing to leave on.
Though it's been common on the Cyprus roadsides, supermarkets and vegetable stands, we hadn't knowingly eaten any taro on the island. So this isn't really a recipe, it's more of an experiment - the goal was to see if we could cook the kolokasi, eat it and survive. We added garlic and tomato paste to our liquid, but otherwise kept it simple - we were curious about how this stuff tasted, and didn't want to muddy up the flavor.
It took about an hour and a half of cooking to make the cubes fork-tender. Interestingly, the crisp edges of the cut kolokasi dissolved as we boiled it, and the whole stew turned into an orange, chunky mash, which isn't so bad on a cold night in the mountains.

A more traditional Cypriot recipe involves making a kind of soup with pork and celery, which makes sense. It would be a great thickening agent in place of more traditional stew roots, adding starch to the broth while remaining somewhat whole.
So, how did it taste? Pretty bland. The flavor is somewhere between that of potato, yucca and plantain. It wasn't much different than any other root vegetable slurry - except for the nervousness about getting sick. For a few hours after eating, we paid careful attention to our stomachs, watching for some sign (who knows what) of low grade kolokasi poisoning. It wasn't until the next morning, really, that we were completely convinced that we'd made it through okay. Maybe baking powder helps too.

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Cypriot Cats

Driving between the Kourion Ruins and Kolossi Castle, we spotted this Cat Sanctuary. Some animals rushed the gate to meet us and then played too cool to look at our cameras, as cats do. Others continued to laze in the sunshine on the hot-plate concrete of their lot. Signs implored our help, in first person. "Help us!" The urgent tones sort of belittled their sanctity. Stumbling upon this wasn't as surprising as you'd think. We were actually more surprised we hadn't seen one yet. You see, Cypriots are real cat people.
The reason for the Cypriot love of cats runs much deeper than an affinity for fur and whiskers. In 2001, an archeological finding proved that Cypriots were the first civilization to domesticate cats - 9,500 years ago, before the Egyptians. Owner and feline were found buried together in an ancient tomb - cuddling. Cats run around everywhere in Cyprus. Here, one little guy pokes his head out in Agios Athanasios. Earlier, we'd seen the Fat Cat of the village back a few smaller kitties into a corner. When he walked away, I thought I spotted some sort of growth or tumor dangling down from his orange fur. Turns out, I'd just never seen a male cat in tact before. I'm American - we like them spayed and neutered.
Recently, Cyprus has tried to attain recognition for two breeds of cat that they claim are indigenous to the country. Named "St. Helen" and "Aphrodite," the breeds have become another conflict point between the Turkish and Greek Cypriots. Both want to call them their own. Since both cats are said to be evolved from an ancient Turkish breed, the Northerners have a point - but efforts to mix them with modern Turkish cats and present the offspring as "Cypriot" too seems a little disingenuous. The bottom line is, for a culture so proud of cats' place in their history (and their place in the history of cats) an internationally recognized breed would mean so much.Down the road from the Cat Sanctuary was a sign for St. Nicholas of the Cats Monastery. The ancient site is said to have brought cats from Egypt thousands of years ago (just as St. Helen's namesake did) to fight off snakes. We skipped the opportunity, already on the way to a castle and feeling like we see enough cats in our day to day life. Every evening, no matter where we stay, a cat tries to come in through the door with us. They are at our feet under outdoor tables. They screech in a brawl, startlingly, at night. Plus - when we went to India years ago, Merlin and his brother were warned that a visit to the Monkey Monastery required a stick to fend them all off. We figured that a visit to the Cat Monastery would probably be better with a spritz bottle in tow.

Gypsy Kitchens: Citrus Season

As we already mentioned, it's citrus season here in Cyprus. Groves cover large stretches of the landscape and are heavy with fruit. Lemons, grapefruits, and especially oranges are impossible to escape. And why try? Costas, our host at Asty Hotel in Nicosia, insisted we take as many oranges from the breakfast room as we could. "I just bought 10 kilos this morning!" he said, inspecting our pickings and deciding they were too slim. Our rental in Agios Athanasios came with a stocked fruit bowl. If we ran out, there was always the daily citrus vendor. Clementines were set out in wicker baskets at outdoor tables in Girne, the healthiest bar snack we'd ever seen.
At first, we kept pace. Two juiced oranges with breakfast, two more for lunch, one in the evening. They are incredibly thick-skinned, which initially fooled us into thinking they were under-ripe. Each orange, once peeled, is about a third of the size it appeared. But, just like great shellfish, any thought about "so much work for so little return" is immediately dashed once the flesh hits your mouth. We have never had oranges like this before. And the mandarins - divine.
Soon, we had to actually buy our own oranges. All of our lovely hand-outs consumed. As soon as the thought came to mind, we only had to look five feet in any direction to find the nearest citrus vendor. With such an abundance absolutely everywhere, it's impossible to buy less than a bundle. The fruit was warm to the touch, sun-soaked, as we placed one after another in our bag. The vendor looked at the amount, gave us a price and then threw a few more in for good measure.
As anyone who has ever gone apple picking knows, there is such a thing as too much of a good fruit. Looking for ways to use all of our perfect Cypriot oranges we created three easy salads, using other ingredients that have been popping up on plates and market stands all around us: beets, chickpeas, local cheese and anchovies. Each salad is designed to utilize one of the orange's great qualities, its sweetness, its sourness and its juiciness.
The first salad is the most traditional, meaning that its base is a leafy green. Complimenting the orange's sweetness, we paired it with bitter rucola, spicy red onion and salty anchovies. Canned fish is a Gypsy Kitchen favorite not just because they keep so well, but because we don't always have a bottle of olive oil available. Use anchovies packed in oil so that you can just drizzle the liquid out of the can right onto your salad. The orange slices provide the acid needed to make it perfectly dressed.
The second salad brings out the orange's tartness and sourness. It's difficult for anything to taste super sweet when put up against a beet. We advise against canned beets, but those pre-cooked whole beets in plastic found in some produce aisles work well if you don't want to cook them yourself. To ground those two vibrant flavors, add cubes of semi-hard mild cheese - cubed so that it will be a third in the trio of ingredients as opposed to glomming on to the other two. We used local dry anari, made from a blend of sheep, cow and goat's milk. Mozzarella would work as well. As would brebis. If you use feta, don't add any extra salt. In Cyprus, parsley is ubiquitous and it's easy to find a big, fresh bunch at any store. As in the other salad, we added red onion, dicing it for some crunch. Dress with olive oil, a little balsamic vinegar and salt.
The third salad plays off of the orange's juiciness. We've been eating a lot of humus in Cyprus so chickpeas seemed only natural. They make a wonderful salad ingredient, but can be a little starchy, even dry. In come the oranges, along with a good amount of parsley to add a little flatness to all the round flavors. We added a little olive oil, red onion and some chili powder, which goes very well with both chickpeas and orange and injects a little Turkish-Cypriot flavor.
The easiest way to add orange to a salad is to cut it into slices, unpeeled. Cut a slit into each slice, unlatching the ring, and pull straight so that the little triangle of orange stick up like teeth from the peel. It's really easy to catch and remove seeds this way and the fruit is easier to work with. Just pull each piece off (working over your salad so that any discarded juice doesn't go to waste). Smaller pieces will mix into your salad more evenly.
Three pieces of fruit remain. If we had the means, we would attempt preserving them, like lemons, as they were served to us a few nights ago at Skourouvinnos Tavern. Chances are, they will be mixed into some sheep yogurt at breakfast tomorrow. And, then, we'll just have to buy some more. Because we can't help ourselves. 'Tis the season.

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Agios Athanasios, The Village That's Still There

We were walking with Kyriakos through the outskirts of Limassol. A self-described “refugee” from Famagusta, Kyriakos had come to Limassol in 1974, along with so many other Greek Cypriots from the north. As we walked, he told us about a little hamlet called Agios Athanasios. On the horizon, construction projects jutted into the sky. Just below us, a raised line of concrete, the main island highway, groaned with traffic. Limassol sprawls. It has spread out along the shore and trudged determinedly up towards the mountains. There’s no real center, no focal point. It is just a massing of buildings and twists of road.

It took us a while to realize, as we walked and talked, that we were actually in the little village. Agios Athanasios is still there, all but swallowed up.

The village shows up in the details – an old stone wall, faded paint, a small square with lemon trees and a church. Old houses pinched the streets into lanes, barely wide enough for a car to squeeze by. In the mornings, a man came through selling oranges from his truck, yelling “mandarinas!” out his window. Kyriakos told us how people had begun to seal up the stone with plaster, how it had changed the place. A new town hall had recently been built in a blocky, modern style.

“Once it was all fields around Agios Athanasios,” we were told. “These are the farm houses.” It was possible, in some little corners, to still see a farming town – in the corners where the old buildings were arranged just so, and the highrises were blocked out.

Limassol was once not much more than a small town located on the sleepy southern coast. Because the ports in the north were better positioned and deeper, the southern shore was neglected – the coast here is more exposed and less interesting, the beaches aren’t as good, historically it was a backwater. The British colonizers preferred the area around Kyrenia, which was founded by Greeks in the 10th century BC, and traditionally had one of the more Greek populations on the island. Limassol, by comparison, was heavily Turkish. When the 1974 conflict segregated Cyprus, the people of the two towns essentially switched places.
The influx of new people into Limassol wasn’t entirely from Kyrenia, though. Many rural refugees from the north ended up in the city, as well as people from Famagusta and northern Nicosia. A much bigger impact was made by tourists, as foreigners became wary of the Turkish occupied area. Holiday homes went up, hotels were built and the beaches were developed. As Cyprus became more of a destination, Limassol increasingly became the hub.
An exit sign for Agios Athanasios on the highway has the grim, smokestack symbol for “industrial area.” When we were renting our car in Nicosia, a man knew exactly where the town was – “oh Agios Athanasios,” he said. “We have a service center there.” It’s sadly true that the village has become something of a warehouse neighborhood for Limassol. The space around the town square is unsightly, jammed up against an offramp and bounded by trash-strewn lots. At the same time, it’s the only part of the city where we saw any semblance of tradition – this bread oven, for example. Old women in kerchiefs, too, and chickens in a little courtyard.

It’s increasingly hard to reconcile the idea of Cyprus as a holiday paradise with the reality of the coast. This is a place where construction still means progress, and where a vacation means being cramming into the space between condo and sea. Limassol is a city of sleek, bland tourist cafes mixed with American fast-food brands and seedy “cabarets.”

Our way of traveling isn’t the same as vacationing. We like to see how a place really functions, how the people really live. Though it’s disappointing, it’s still interesting to find a wasteland of new development – this is reality, not the brochure.

But at night, Agios Athanasios' Skourouvinnos taverna blends both worlds together. It’s a modern place, full of young people from Limassol proper – but it still feels a hundred miles from the bustle of the city. Yiannakis, the young chef and owner, bounced around the dining room energetically, his cell-phone ringing constantly. “Everyone wants to come,” he said to us. “I have to say no to all my friends.” The house is old and rustic, the atmosphere is communal and convivial. It’s the only real restaurant in Agios Athanasios, something like the village pub.
Cypriots appreciate traditional tavern food just as much as we foreigners do, and so they’ll drive up to this little village-within-a-city, find the town square amongst the chain-link bracken, and crowd into Skourouvinnos until there’s nowhere left to sit. Just like in the villages, the food is simple, delicious and plentiful – we were sitting at the bar and the waitress had to begin piling plates on top of one another to fit it all.

As we walked home, it really did feel as though we were in a small town – leaving the taverna, the din of voices quieted and then dropped away, all we could hear were our own footsteps on the street. The lights of town lit up the sky around us, but Agios Athanasios hadn’t been completely swallowed up.

Gypsy Kitchens: The Durrell

English writer Lawrence Durrell lived in Cyprus for about three years in the 1950s and remains one if its most talked about residents. It's no surprise, being as Durrell told the world about his time here in a memoir called Bitter Lemons of Cyprus. We'd never heard of it, nor had we heard of him until we began to research the country. His name came up as often and with as much assumed interest as Van Gogh's in Provence. The home he lived in, the school he taught at, the hotel he listed as "the best in town," are all considered historic sights. In his home village of Bellapais, two trees contend for the title of "The Tree of Idleness," an important landmark in Bitter Lemons. The fact that he found Limassol "unsightly" comes up in Lonely Planet's history of the city. In Limassol, we bought the book and created a cocktail in his honor. That way we'd be able to curl up with them both.
The man at the used bookshop told us "not to believe everything - it is just Lawrence's opinion." We doubt this came only from his distaste for Limassol. Three chapters in, he has happily drank Commandaria with Greek-Cypriot friends and Coca Cola with Turkish-Cypriot friends. His life was a blissful convergence of the two cultures that would divide the country in a clash. Durrell left Cyprus after the "enosis" based EOKA resistance movement really heated up. This was the desire of Greek-Cypriots to break from England and become part of Greece. As Lawrence was a Brit, I'm sure his take on the events of 1955 don't mesh with the old book seller's. We're enjoying Bitter Lemons and enjoying The Durrell cocktail even more.
Obviously, we began with Schweppe's Bitter Lemon. Any American traveling to Western Europe will come home with tales of the stuff. A friend of ours shipped a case of it to themselves, not wanting to have to quit cold turkey after two weeks of drinking it in Portugal. Usually, candies and drinks that are going for "lemon" go more for the sweet and sour aspects of its flesh. This leaves you thinking more about its peel. It tastes like a very bitter tonic water, very zesty. Obviously, Bitter Lemon goes well with gin, but we wanted to keep things more local. Ouzo, ours made by the Cypriot company KEO, is the Greek version of France's Pastis or Turkey's Raki - an anise aperitif that turns cloudy when you add water. The third ingredient is, you guessed it, bitters. A local Limassol company, Magousta, has been making "Magic Drops" since the 1930s. However, it was originally called "Cock Drops," a fact made more unfortunate by the label's recommendation to "snip the top" of your Cock Drops bottle to have it dispense correctly. Last ingredient, lemon.
It's citrus season here in Cyprus. The oranges, clementines and mandarins are being harvested. The grapefruit is almost ready and the lemon trees are bare from earlier collection. Lemons in Cyprus are big and sweet. And abundant. Most houses have at least one lemon tree, every meze dinner comes with a plate full of wedges. Greek Cypriot recipes feature lemon prominently, so our Greek Cypriot cocktail does, too. We only needed a quarter of a lemon for each glass because the wedges were incredibly juicy.
You never really know when conceptualizing a cocktail, but somehow we created a truly delicious drink. The Durrell's ingredients go so well together that we now mix one up any evening we have available ice. The ouzo, on its own, is sweet and heavy. Adding the biting, carbonated Bitter Lemon really balances that out. A drop of bitters adds a little complexity, like a single bay leaf does in a big pot of soup. Since Magousta's Magic Drops is bright red, this tints The Durrell pink. Ole Lawrence is a little flushed. A good squeeze of lemon and you've got the final note: fresh, vibrant citrus. Now, go ahead and pick up a guide book about Cyprus. Every time Lawrence Durrell or Bitter Lemons of Cyprus is mentioned, take a sip of The Durrell. We assure you it will be a very educational and dangerous drinking game. Here's the recipe. Serve on the rocks.

2 parts Ouzo
1 part Schweppe's Bitter Lemon
A drop of bitters
1 - 2 quarters lemon, depending on juiciness
Ice 

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A Different Kind of Ruin

Picture Cyprus in 1973, the year before division, when the island was still whole. Salamis, the vast ruin on the northeastern coast, was just beginning to be mapped out and dug up. Kourion – or Courium, as it’s sometimes called – was a spare, scattered collection of rocks and pillars. Much smaller than Salamis, it had always been considered something of a secondary site. Not much had been unearthed, Limassol hadn’t become a tourism destination yet.

Thirty-nine years later, Salamis is much the same. Kourion, on the other hand, is spick and span, with a plush visitors center, immaculately kept mosaics and a reputation for tour-group crowds. When we visited, there weren’t too many people, but it was all so clean - was this a ruin or a museum?

Set in hardpacked, much brushed dirt, some of the finest old mosaics on Cyprus lie. The red soil (as fine as velvet) holds gleaming bits of stone and tile - perfectly clean. The best of them are protected from rain and sun by arched, wood-beamed canopies. Walkways have been installed so that visitors can pass over them without damaging the tiles, information plaques give details about each scene. It’s all in strange contrast with unprotected, unadorned Salamis, where it took us almost forty-five minutes just to find two small scraps of mosaic.
Kourion was built along a ridge above these lime cliffs, just in off a stony beach. The position is one of the more easily defended spots along the southern coast, and there’s evidence of Neolithic man inhabiting the same place, and a formative city being built as early as 1300 BC. High up, with spectacular views, the complex eventually became a Byzantine religious site, which is when it was likely at its peak. A grand basilica was built in the fifth century, but there are surprising suggestions – found in jewelry, most importantly – that Kourion was predominantly Christian as early as the third century.

The spot gained notoriety in the 1860’s, when an American man supposedly dug up a trove of gold, silver and jeweled objects – which he then sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Many people, even at the time, are skeptical that the objects were actually found at Kourion, but the intrigue was such that other archaeologists were drawn down to the southern coast. Much of the excavation work was done shoddily, and not a whole lot was really discovered at first. The focus for a long time was on finding artifacts – there are so many ancient ruins in this part of the world that Kourion’s buildings themselves didn’t espouse much enthusiasm. By the 1950’s and 60’s, the focus had shifted to the much larger and more important ruin at Salamis.

Then, in 1974, Cyprus was divided. Salamis fell on the northern side, Limassol grew from a town into a city. Tourism boomed in the south, and the Cypriot government started looking for new attractions.

In these warm, sunny March days, we bleached-skin visitors from the cold aren’t an overwhelming presence on Cyprus. Life is still fairly local, the high season is another month away. But the mark of tourism is on everything – from the “luxury apartment” for-sale signs, aimed at Brits, to the cruise ships lurking offshore. Kourion is no exception. It’s been spruced up and beautified, with elegant walkways and benches looking out over the sea.

And every square inch of interesting tile has been brushed and restored and preserved. Cyprus climbed its way out of destitution on the backs of foreign guests. The country is well aware that attractions like this need to be invested in.

The frustrating thing for us – and for many archaeologists – is that Salamis possesses a trove many times the size of Kourion’s. After the Turkish invasion, though, virtually all excavation and study was halted at the northern site, and almost no researchers have been given access since. It’s almost a given that further exploration would uncover works just as important as the ones at Kourion – the two sites are just so unequal in terms of size and importance. When this little rocky hilltop was at its peak, Salamis was one of the principal capitals of the eastern Mediterranean. One look at the Salamis bath ruins will tell you how much there is still uncovered – they alone feel almost as large as the entirety of Kourion.
We walked in the sun for a while, looking at broken pillars and bath house floors. Down along the beach, kiteboarders had unfurled colorful sails. In the meadows below, a few horses grazed on the spring-green grass. We looked at the much-touted basilica, which was ruined by an earthquake not long after being built. Kourion was largely abandoned in the sixth and seventh centuries – drinking water was scarce, the threat from pirates had increased, life was easier further inland.

After hearing and reading so much about the place, Kourion felt a little disappointing. If it wasn’t so close to Limassol, if it wasn’t in the tourist-clogged south, it wouldn’t be what it is today. Local children would probably be climbing on the rock, mushroom pickers would be walking through the uncut grass, the whole thing would lie exposed to the elements. That’s what Salamis is like – as though no-one really cares about the treasure they have. Though it’s impossible to blame them, people care about Kourion a little too much. It’s what they have, after all.

It’s funny how several millennia can be clouded by the current politics of place. As we drove back to Limassol, we talked about the difference between the two places, and realized that we were talking less about the ancients and more about the present.