Day 15

Day 15 Wednesday 28th November    Trail near Ayia Trias to Rizokarpasso

By the time we rise the kitchen of the Eleousa restaurant and hotel is already a veritable hive of activity. There are comings and goings in the kitchen and the log fire has been commandeered by the women of the house to prepare what I can only describe as vegetable pasties. The pyrotechnics of the ladies is to be respected. Fearlessly they place their thinly rolled dough onto a grill over a log-fuelled flaming fire, turning and removing these by hand, over and over again seemingly immune to the intense heat. We observe in silent respect as we huddle around as near as possible to the fire. Whether rolling dough, cooking on the open fire or filling the pastry with produce from the farm, several ladies form a non-stop, well drilled cohort of warrior cooks.  No men are visible – no doubt attending to matters of import elsewhere on the farm. We are delighted when some of these pasties are served to us for breakfast, also prepared and served by the women of the house.

We set out from the trail marker at 9:20am. We are heading towards Rizokarpasso, the last and furthest village on the panhandle. Much of today is spent back on higher ground as the Karpass range continues its transition from high mountain range to rolling high hills before giving up to the sea at Apostolos Andreas.

We are back in Tugberk’s beloved vegetation of trees and shrubs and plants. His insights into plant life are delivered with such expertise and style that we are hungry students. My blisters, which have required  daily double blister plasters for a few days now, also welcome the distraction. Nick’s medical expertise and my blister plasters are also called on to aid our guide who has now developed his own blister to accompany his painful toe joint.

In this way we pass the morning, admiring the views back over the hills and mountains we have vanquished. We pass no one nor any significant landmarks  - the estrangement of the Karpass from civilisation is no better felt than in these final miles of the Besparmak. As if to prove the point 3 wild donkeys break cover ahead of us on the trail and gallop at pace away from us. We watch them round bends and finally disappear from sight.

Rizokarpasso appears on the horizon. More a town rather than a village, it was predominantly inhabited by Greeks before the island’s partition. Today its occupants are not entirely Turkish – but more of this later.

The trail heads lower and comes out onto more open farmland with the town now almost a constant feature ahead of us. The Besparmak carries on to rendezvous with the northern coast before heading back into Rizokarpasso. We  ignore this detour and once we reconnect with the main highway from Famagusta we follow it into the town, passing outlying homes and homesteads as we approach.

The closer we get the larger the scale of Rizzokarpasso is apparent. As we enter the centre we pass shops and restaurants and coffee shops as well as the police station. Tugberk also shows us a small cave that is hidden from the main road but runs under it, the location of a small chapel dedicated to a local saint that once lived here. It seems the aesthetic life was popular among Cyprus’ early devout Christians – not a habit popular with their descendants today.

Finally the main road comes to a crossing with a signpost to Apostolos Andreas right in the heart of the town. This is a most suitable place to end our walk for the day which we do at 14:40pm.

I have an ulterior motive for stopping here – to speak Greek with some of the locals. For a while after the Turkish invasion in 1974 much of the panhandle was cut off. When the island was partitioned many Greek Cypriots were trapped high up the panhandle. Over the next decade most found there way south, but some remained, supplied by  UN peacekeepers. Today there are some 250 Greek Cypriot inhabitants in and around Rizokarpasso.

I have come through Rizokarpasso on a number of occasions both before and after the partition. All for the same reason – a pilgrimage to the monastery at the island’s tip. A stop to have a coffee or meal in the town’s centre before completing the last few lonely miles to the monastery was a must.

Before the border crossings between north and south were first opened in 2003, Greeks from the south were only allowed to visit Apostolos Andreas once a year on the 30th November to celebrate the saints name-day. They could only travel on designated buses under UN guard.

Since 2003 Greeks have crossed by car to visit the monastery. A popular place for them to stop would be at the couple of Greek-run coffee shops on this very crossroad. I had stopped here in the past, most noticeably when we were joined by family and friends from the south while completing our bicycle circumnavigation 5 years earlier.

We head to one of these for post-walk refreshments. I enjoy ordering in Greek and having a conversation with the local Greek proprietors about life in the north and our sojourn. We stay awhile watching life go by and contemplating how close we are to completing our challenge.

Eager for more Greek exposure we ask where we could get a traditional Greek meal that evening. We are directed to a restaurant on the road out of town towards the monastery. We pop in to make sure it would be open that evening. It is a surprisingly large restaurant – taking perhaps 100 people. It is closed but people are inside clearly busy setting out the restaurant. I approach and in Greek make enquiries. It seems that they are preparing the facility for the influx of Greek pilgrims that would be arriving for the Apostle’s name day and  have closed in preparation – this is by far their biggest event of the year and much has to be done. I tell them our story at which the lady of the house withdraws to have a chat with her family and colleagues. She returns to say that they would be cooking for themselves and that we are welcome to join in whatever they prepare, confirming that it would be Greek cuisine. A deal was struck for our later return.

Showered and refreshed back at our base, Tugberk decides to take us to see the sunset from a bar on the coast. This is no ordinary sundown bar location. Below Rizokarpasso on the northern coast was the site of the ancient Phoenician  city of Karpasia from which the region, the town and the mountain range take their name. The Romans later came to build a port there. This, plus the substantial remains of a church and monastery dedicated to Ayios Phillon together make this a site very well worth visiting. The church is about a thousand years old and was built on a basilica that predates this by another half a millennium.

Settling down with a drink in the sunset lounge of a bar built on a promontory, we wait with sunglasses and cameras at the ready to be enraptured by a sunset of equal proportions to last night’s, casting its colours of fire over centuries old ruins of ancient eastern and western cultures. Sadly, clouds appear on the horizon at the key moment.

But the highlight of the evening was ahead of us. Back at the Greek restaurant the owners have laid out a single table for us next to the kitchen. Here a number of women are busy preparing food for the night and food for their many more guests in a couple of days. They  serve up Greek home cooking but with a surprising added extra.

From the back the owner of the restaurant, Michalis, appears wearing a back-to-front cap bandanna covering his long hair and carrying a bouzouki. He sits with us and serenades us all evening with his repertoire of traditional Greek folk songs in a one night karaoke performance. In between songs he imbibes himself with some local spirit that resembles zivania which only encourages him to sing louder and longer. There is a constant smile on his face and he clearly is having a wonderful night – not sure how many times he has a chance to get his bouzouki out and play to his customers.

When he pauses for breath and to attend to his bouzouki I enquire about life as a Greek behind the lines. Not too bad is his assessment but the numbers are getting fewer with the inevitable attrition that time brings. I am the only one in our party that can speak Greek so it is my duty to be social to our host and to translate for my friends.

Another great day comes to a great end – now for the final push.

Day 15 stats: Distance 12.6 miles (20.3 Km), total miles 193.9  (322.2 Km)