I’m leant against the car, gasping, giggling, sucker-punched by the cold. Around me, the landscape is motionless and brittle. The tops of trees have exploded as the wind tried to bend them. Overhead, dirty clouds boil past like timelapse photography. The rock-strewn ground is so hard you expect it to ring. Take the trees and ice-rimed telephone lines away, and you’re left with the surface of Mars.
I’m on the same latitude as Algeria and Morocco, and the temperature is 15 below freezing.
We’ve been driving up the Troodos mountains for a good hour now, and the car’s thermometer has enthralled us, falling away from the balmy warmth you’d expect from a typical November day in Cyprus, down, degree by degree until I can feel the difference against a hand held near a side-window, not quite touching it. The cold puffs and hisses against my skin as the land falls away below us.
I remember none of this. What’s wrong with me?
Mile by mile, the scenery became more stunted and bewildered-looking. But – Cyprus! Sun-tan lotion that’s never a high enough Factor, azure seas, dripping ice-creams, kebabs on the beach at midnight. Kalamari, chewy and lemony. Where’s this?
We drive through a scrappy outcrop of buildings, a boarded-up cafe, the skeleton of a ski lift. There’s wind enough to blow litter, but the trees don’t move. We pass a car – the driver has rubbed a hole in the condensation-fogged windscreen so he can see out. Things glitter unexpectedly.
And now we’re out, and I’m leaning against the car. Every breath stings.
At 1952 metres above sea level, the summit of Mount Olympus is the highest and most exposed point in Cyprus. It doesn’t dominate the surrounded landscape, being nestled amidst terrain of similar height…but on its upper slopes, the blanketing of dark pine frays and diminishes, the trees visible shrinking before the wind. At its top perches a golf ball, as if waiting for Zeus to pick a club. (It’s a British radar installation).
And the view never stops changing.
We scramble up a rubble-strewn slope, following a line of steel pillars supporting a ski-lift. Passing a tree, I bang my gloved fist against it, then a minute later against a metal column. They feel just the same. By standing directly under the taller trees we can feel the gentle patter of falling ice flecks, barely heard – and sometimes the trees creak, a ludicrous sound like a door in a bad horror movie.
It’s bitterly cold – the air not much below freezing but with a windchill that drags the temperature down to painful levels, numbing fingers within seconds when gloves are dragged off, searing lungs and making our lips tingle. I don’t remember it being this cold when I was growing up.
As a Royal Air Force child living in Nicosia in the ’70s, I was regularly brought up here by my parents. We’d wander up onto these slopes (I don’t remember this part), my dad would take photos and then we’d descend to nearby Platres for a slap-up meal ending with ice-cream (my memory regains its strength here).
Twenty years later, my friends and I are here, driving down into Platres in search of calories to replace the ones we’ve been breathing out for the last half-hour…and I recognise the restaurant. The chairs are packed away and the tables are pooled with rainwater, but it’s unmistakeably in operation when the weather’s right. There’s a past here I can try to reclaim, a personal archaeology I can dig up. And that’s why I’ll have to go back.
(When it’s a bit warmer).
Really enjoyed this, Mike, especially the first paragraph which is wicked!
Funny timing too – I saw from your Matador profile that you grew up in Nicosia, and was gonna ask when. Now I know ; )
I’m in Northern Cyprus at the minute, in Girna. Very pretty place, and the people are great!
Thanks, Nick!
Aha, Girna (which I know as Kyrenia). I have no memories, but we definitely visited. My dad was part of the United Nations peacekeeping contingent and we travelled around quite a bit even after the Turkish occupation of the North.
Coincidence indeed. And I’m jealous. Cyprus is in my blood. I’d love to do what Colin Thubron did (a walk right round the whole island) but for the political reasons that’s a bit impractical at the moment. However…I could still do it in two stages.
How long are you there for?
The Girna/Kyrenia thing is a funny one. I was asking around in Turkish Nicosia (or Lefkosa) about buses to Kyrenia. No-one had any clue what I was talking about! Didn’t help that I don’t speak any Turkish. Someone finally cottoned on that I wanted what he knew of as Girna, and he actually flagged the bus down for me.
I also wanted to get the Thubron book, but didn’t see it in Cairo and haven’t managed to find it here yet either.
Just here on hol with my mum, being a dutiful son! (She hates Cairo, and I’m visiting England in May so we decided to meet half way.) Be here till March 4th. Really love it so far!
From what I was told by my friend & guide Alan in 2006, there was a bitter cultural naming war – hence the Lefkosia/Nicosia thing. Road signs were changed or placed in opposition to each other, maps became impossibly confusing…and locals clung to one side’s naming conventions or the other’s, doggedly.
So I guess it’s just possible they knew what you were talking about, but refused to acknowledge it! (Or maybe they were now so accustomed to Girna that the name had disappeared from common knowledge).
Blimey.
Well, I remain jealous. It’s a part of the world I’d love to explore. Hope you’re blogging copiously about it? (Loved your Cairo market piece, BTW. Stellar).
15 below? Ye gods …
Hey, maybe we should go to Cyprus when I finish here in Salento. June warm enough for you?
That’s a damn fine idea. (And will slake my thirst for all things Greek / Mediterranean this year).
Yes. I like. Let’s play with that idea some.
Had a friend who spent 5 weeks on Cyprus singing backup with a Latino Elvis impersonator called ElVez–she loved the island a lot –but then again it WAS summer…
the pictures remind me of Southern Oregon mountains in winter after a big fire..stark, very stark.
There definitely aren’t enough Latino Elvis impersonators in the world. It’s a fact.
It’s a fascinating place, summer or winter. I’d say “lovely” but Colin Thubron has it right – it’s often starkly handsome rather than beautiful, and some areas are downright inhospitable (which is not to say they’re unattractive – just intolerent of incautious folk).
“After a big fire” – yes, nicely observed. A traumatized landscape.
Brrrr. You once convinced me I must go there. I don’t feel quite so convinced today.
It all depends on how reliable your thermal underwear is…
In the summer, mind, the mountains are cool rather than life-suckingly freezing, and apparently terrific for brisk hiking and cycling.
And ground level (varying from “warm” to “is my head actually on fire?”) is only a bus-ride away.
I SO want to read more about your childhood experiences at Mt. Olympus and the ice cream that followed. Conjured up images of a tiny tot scampering at the feet of Gods – especially when you invoked the imagery of Zeus and his golf club.
As I write this I’m visiting my Mum, and I’ve been picking her brains about my time in Cyprus, trying to fit together my fragments of memory. There’s plenty more to write – especially when I’ve pulled out all my Dad’s 35mm slides (he liked his photography).
But there’s only one way to really recover those memories, and that’s to make new ones that fill in all the gaps. So that’s a personal travel quest, right there.
You don’t want to be on the course when Zeus misses a putt. Trust me. Nasty temper + ability to hurl lightning = Bad For Everyone.