Day 3
Day 3: Thursday November 15th Diarizos river crossing above Kidasi to Pano Platres
The girls drive us to our start point at the Diarizos crossing above Kidasi for an 8:24 am start. They will go back home, pack up and move our base to the Semiramis hotel in Platres where they will be based for the next couple of days.
There are two possible routes to Platres – the shorter, direct but steeper higher route through the sparsely populated Kedares and Praitori villages, or the longer lower route past the abandoned villlages of Gerosava and Trozena. The latter, with their own waterfalls in the winter, rest snugly in their own valley with spectacular views down the Diarizos valley. As we had seen enough abandoned villages lower down the Diarizos, we decide to take the shorter route. Either way, it is road all the way.
There is little to say about the stretch to Ayios Nikolaos other than it is road, and the walking is comfortable, although steeper (but not steep) than the lower reaches of the Diarizos once you climb out of the valley.
Beyond Ayios Nikolaos, we have an easy walk to Mandria and the main road from Omodos to Platres. The walking has been easy so we decide to save the girls a trip to pick us up and finish our walk at the Semiramis hotel in Pano Platres. As we approach the terrain gets steeper, a tester for tomorrow’s steepest section of the whole walk – the climb from Pano Platres to Troodos Square. We arrive at the hotel at 2pm where the girls are still finishing off a lazy and boozy lunch – lucky we didn’t need them!
The Semiramis is a family run hotel which is why I chose it. On our arrival after our second full day of walking the hosts are friendly and available. They light up the large fireplace in the lounge, serve up drinks by the fireplace and provide us with a hearty local meal - all delivered with a smile, polite and timely service and an openness and patience when responding to our enquiries about the history of the hotel and its life through the seasons.
We share these experiences with a party of German hikers. Following the stereotypical jousting for the best seats near the fireplace for our respective parties, in Cypriot style we launch into introductions and explanations and interrogations – How do you find the hotel? Where did you hike today? Where are you from? Etc.
‘Where are you from'?’ is met with a little reticence. Cautiously they reveal that they now live in the north of the island, are active hikers and headed into the south for a few days in the Troodos range. Nearly 45 years since the island’s partition, foreigners living in the north remain a sensitive subject to the community in the south – and unusually these particular foreigners were aware of this sensitivity.
We relax them – this is not the time for polemics – and we spend the rest of the evening quizzing them about trails in the north that we are likely to experience. They drool over the Besparmak trail – ‘ah’ we say, meaning ‘yeah, the north is going to produce better trails than the south - pull the other one’. We should have known that Germans, unlike Greeks, are not prone to hyperbole and exaggeration.
The combination of a warm log fire on a cold evening, flowing local cocktails and wines, and filling local food worthy of a day’s hiking leaves us in good spirits and ready to take on the steepest section of the whole walk tomorrow morning.
Day 3 Stats: Distance 13.6 miles (21.8 Km), Total miles 37.6 miles (60.5 Km)