As a regular service to our readers your blog hosts here at bitter lemmings will be presenting and reviewing information available on the web related to Cyprus. First up is an article 'Travels and Tribulations - in Cyprus' which reports the experiences of an unnamed traveller and his wife, Hazel. They travelled from the UK expecting hot weather - the weather was shite....read on:
The Weather
...A chilly wind blew most of the time in Cyprus and we, along with many others, were unexpectedly caught out - although, to be fair, the sun did shine most of the time, although the temperature never got high enough for our satisfaction, let alone delight. The rest of the time it rained quite hard!...
The Roads
...The traffic moves fast and erratically in general, and down a road full of water-laden potholes such as this, drivers tend to take the driest route, irrespective of where this takes them car on the road. Do you remember an old video game in the days where things weren't so darned sophisticated where you had to get turtles across a multi-lane highway without them getting splatted? Well, crossing the road here is a bit like that! You had to plot your route across the road between the huge, water-laden potholes, wait until there was nothing on the horizon, then just go for it! With luck you could weave, jump and make your way to the opposite pavement and into some handy bunker before the next car's bow-wave rolled in...
The Scenery
...Many people say how beautiful Cyprus is. Perhaps it is because I live in green Dorset, in the UK, that this was not the impression I got. The drab scrubland which populates much of the island - of which I show no pictures - does not have the same beauty as green grass in my opinion but, if you want sun, you can't have everything. (Of course America can prove that wrong by spraying on new grass, as in Palm Springs! But that's another story in these pages.) It's not as if it's their fault, because water is a scarce commodity there...
The Cruise
...Our pre-booked 'Mediterranean Cruise' was, according to the brochure, to be on a rather fine looking cruise liner (or occasionally her sister ships, as the brochure put it). Don't you just love those phrases: "You'll stay in such-and-such hotel or similar!" So when we arrived at the 'cruise ship' to find that entry was via a car ramp at the stern - maybe the bow, if it was, indeed different - you'll understand that disappointment began to set in. Thankfully we had been a little crafty and had paid a supplement for a larger outside cabin. Call us old-fashioned, but we do like some daylight to filter in from somewhere when on board a ship. It does help a little with the claustrophobia. We were given some slips of paper to identify our cabin when we walked up the entry ramp - which someone promptly took away from us - and then a porter led us to our cabin. True, it was an outer cabin, but it was hard to believe that this was what we had paid extra for. You could imagine a couple of weary truck drivers bedding down in it for a few hours, but it didn't really accord with what we had in mind for our supplement. We were give to expect a four bunk cabin for the two of us, yet there were only two bunks to be seen here. By the time we had recovered from the shock of the tiny cabin, tiny 'bathroom', tiny bunks, the porter had gone.
Anyway, not being complainers by nature, we started to change and to try to find somewhere to unpack some stuff, although this seemed a great challenge. I had just discarded my trousers when the cabin door shot open again and another porter armed with bulky cases entered, shortly followed by two more passengers whom, it transpired, had better claim to the cabin (ie they had the correct slips of paper). After a hastily putting my trousers back on - I had the feeling that the rightful lady owner of the cabin would prefer this - the second porter scampered away to try to clarify matters. Needless to say he could hardly understand a word of English - not many of the crew did - so we really didn't know what to expect other than camping down in a passageway or the engine room. We packed our cases again under the piercing scrutiny of the competing passengers who no doubt regarded us as intruders, opportunists, squatters, or perhaps illegal immigrants; they didn't speak English either, so our explanations fell on stony ground.
A third porter arrived a little while later, mumbled something foreign we couldn't understand, grabbed our cases, and began to lead us a dance along narrow passageways, up and down staircases, gesturing and smiling encouragingly back at us, until it seemed there was no hope that he actually knew what he was doing. Eventually he stopped and seemed to be admitting this. Torn between asking for the captain or demanding the return of our original cabin - at least is was somewhere to rest a weary body - we were surprised when he suddenly seemed to have a flash of inspiration and cantering off again, soon threw open a cabin door and ushered us into what actually was to become our cabin. The preamble made it look luxurious by comparison with our original offering, which is, perhaps, all part of the plan. Had we been taken there directly I doubt if we would have seen it that way. True, there were four berths in it and, true, with two stowed, this did leave two reasonable ones, and a slightly larger 'bathroom'. Anyway, it served as home for us for 3 nights. (The pithy sign in the toilets that firmly requested passengers not to put any toilet paper down the toilet was a surprise. It made the mind boggle to think what more law-abiding passengers might make of this. I just hope that it lost something in the translation.)
The plan was to sail through Night 1, land in Israel for a day trip on Day 2, sail through Night 2, land in Egypt for a day trip on Day 3, sail through the night back to Cyprus on Night 3. The remaining time on board was spend: a) queuing for breakfast; eating breakfast; queueing to see and maybe pay for photographs taken of every movement both on and off board, queuing for dinner, queueing to see and maybe pay for more photographs taken of every movement both on and off board, queuing for lunch boxes and to get on and off the boat, and, oh yes, enjoying the evening entertainments. The basic choices were bar, casino or floor-show. As a converted car ferry - gosh, didn't I mention that before - it was not as stable as the cruise liner we had optimistically anticipated, and Hazel spent some further time on the second night clutching her stomach and visiting the 'bathroom' to revisit her dinner. I joined some friends to watch the floor show one night and that was quite entertaining: imagine the dancers trying to get a grip of their act as the floor alternately changed from plus to minus 15 degrees, but they took it in good part and stomach, kept the grins plastered across their faces, and did a good job at making it all look quite the normal thing you should expect on a Mediterranean cruise. By the way, I never did see a Captain's Table, let alone visit it!
The article does not record whether the author and his wife made the return trip to Cyprus...perhaps they are still lost at sea.
