Cypriot Cuisine: Love Is in the Air by Maxine Jones
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“I love Cyprus,” said an English neighbour who’d spent many holidays there.
“Why?” I asked, still trying to get a handle on it after a short break in the south.
“It’s clean, friendly, family oriented, familiar – they even drive on the left,” she said.
“Yet it’s only 75kms from Syria,” I added.
She looked at me aghast. “Is it?” she said.
The English love affair with Cyprus has lasted since 1878, when they took over the island from the Ottomans. Even since independence in 1960, the British have retained their military bases and their chain stores. They make up half of the 2.5 million tourists who descend on the Republic of Cyprus (the southern bit) each year.
But British visitors are now on the wane and Cyprus is wooing the Irish. Four hundred Irish couples got married there last year, according to a representative of Concorde Travel. While the number of charter flights this summer is lower than last year, four Irish holiday companies compete in the market between May and September.
Travelling from Dublin at the end of April, via Heathrow, the distance was apparent and the journey took most of the day. Coming back on a direct charter was quicker – a little over five hours.
I landed at Paphos in darkness. There was a smell in the air – a hint of manure and warm hay – that made me aware I was in a different place, one that was more Middle East than Mediterranean. Yet the hotel in Limassol was indistinguishable from any four-star in a major sun resort, comfortable and predictable with balconies overlooking the pool and beach. A line of such hotels stretches for 12 kms into the centre of Limassol itself.
Landing in Limassol
Limassol is a sprawling workaday town, where the tourist veneer is thin and which I suspect would repay further exploration. As it was, I had a peek into the medieval castle and museum, the site where Richard the Lionheart married his fiancée, who had been shipwrecked on the island. The nearby side streets are atmospheric, with peeling blue doors and hidden mosques.
Along the main street I spotted a Debenhams, a MacDonald’s and Pizza Hut. ‘Topless Dancers’ are frequently signalled. Signs are so often in English that the occasional Greek hoarding comes almost as a surprise. Just as often, it seems, the script is Cyrillic or Arabic.
The guide who took us out of the city and up into the Troodos region prided herself on coming from Limassol. “We’re party people,” she said. “Even in Nicosia you can spot a table of people from Limassol – we are the liveliest.” She recommended the carnival here and the September wine festival in the Municipal Gardens.
The bus wound up the hills through well-cared-for villages. Houses sport solar panels and schools and sports centres look new and well equipped. Zoe, the guide, filled us in on the history and mythology of Cyprus, birthplace of the God of Love, Aphrodite.
When she touched on the division between the south and north of Cyprus, the hurt was apparent, despite an attempt to put on a positive front for visitors. Few tourists visit the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is unrecognised by any country except Turkey and was left out when the southern part joined the EU in 2004.
“Only men use the cafes,” Zoe told us as the bus lumbered past a group of old men sitting outside one. Yet the sunk-in-the-past image was shattered when she expressed surprise at seeing a donkey. “Multi-cultivators and pickups have replaced them,” she said.
Classic Cypriot Cuisine
Food, however, has remained traditional, and for me this was the high point of my Cyprus trip. Starters, or meze, come in wave after wave of exquisite fresh ‘tasters’, followed by larger meatier (or fishier) portions until you are actually begging the waiter not to bring you any more. He will insist, however, fearful you will miss a delicacy and you give way and are grateful as you experience the new morsel.
Eventually, when you think you can go on no longer a laden fruit bowl will appear in front of each diner, along with a big bowl of yoghurt and honey and, incredibly, you continue eating. So much of a Greek Cypriot meal is fresh salad and vegetables and so little of it has been anywhere near a chemical or preservative that you do not end up bloated and can almost feel the food doing you good.
Our tour of the green heights inland from Limassol took in the village of Agros, where a rose water distillery was marked by posters of visitors floundering in a sea of rose petals. We were a couple of weeks short of seeing the roses in bloom. The shop sold rose-based cosmetics and perfume and even a rose-infused Cabernet. Most of the group bought a bottle of the rose brandy, which packed an agreeable punch.
Also in Agros we admired the industry of the women involved in traditional sweet making at Niki’s. The stainless steel counters gleamed as the women peeled oranges and stirred vats. Strings of what looked like sausages were in fact nuts covered in a solidified grape substance. Called Soutzioukos, they’re on sale throughout the region. Real sausages were found further along the street at Kefkalias, where smoked meats are made following traditional recipes.
The 5000-Year Old Wine Industry
The Troodos area is also the centre of Cyprus’s 5,000-year-old wine industry. We sampled some in Omodos at the Zenon family’s winery. It was in Omodos that the deep-rooted devoutness of the Cypriots became clear. In the Church of the Holy Cross, Zoe kissed the silver crucifix which contains a piece of the real cross of Jesus. There was no speculation in Zoe’s account. Throughout her talk men and women entered the church and kissed the icons with a fervour I have only come across before in Russia.
As Zoe took us along the streets decked with lace and tourist gifts, she greeted people on all sides with a breezy, “Xristos Anesti” – “Christ is Risen”, marking the season.
At a lovely long lunch in the village we noticed how one of our group, Sara, had bought something from every shop we’d visited in Agros. “Not me,” she said. “The bus driver.” During our tour he had been showering her with little gifts. The spirit of Aphrodite still hung in the air. Not least when Zoe, a young grandmother, told us of her partner of five years, an Englishman who had been in one of her tour groups.
The following day we moved on to Agia Napa, notorious for its nightlife. On the way we stopped off at the Neolithic site of Choirokoitia, one of the 13 UNESCO heritage sites on the island. This 9,000-year-old settlement of circular white huts allows you a glimpse into the everyday workings of the village. The similarities with villages today are striking, as are the differences – they buried their dead under the floors of the huts they lived in.
Around Agia Napa
Agia Napa was calmer than I expected as this was the very start of the season. The hotels are nicely camouflaged from each other in pretty bays and a pleasant walkway leads through them along the beach to the harbour and town centre. There are numerous shops and cafes and a surfeit of souvenir shops. I was surprised not to see souvenirs of souvenir shops on sale, as they would surely be an abiding memory.
The marketing manager of the Nissi Beach hotel told us they had done 300 weddings the previous year, around two a day given the short season. The setting was certainly pleasant, though maybe less so at full capacity. The sea is shallow and clear here and the beach inviting.
We ate very well that evening at the quieter Alion Beach hotel, enlivened by an impromptu Zorba the Greek dance from some of our party, possibly the first of many the bar staff would have to witness over the season. We admired a necklace Sara was wearing, to hear that the bus driver had bought it for her. The bus driver was supposed to be a bit of a singer so we encouraged him to take over the mike from the resident musician. The result sounded a little off-key to our untutored ears – it was a traditional rendition - but Sara looked impressed.
The Cape Greko coastline, with its sea caves, was our destination the next day - an unspoilt stretch overlooking an emerald and dark blue sea. The bus driver picked flowers for Sara. Later we looked round the Agia Napa monastery and gardens, an incongruous patch of tranquility and antiquity in the middle of the tourist town. The driver had a bottle of juice waiting for Sara when she got back on the bus.
Sara and the bus driver shared little common language. Unusually for a Greek Cypriot his English was not great. He got a hug from Sara at the airport and had asked for nothing more, just to like her and to buy her little tokens. The art of gentle courting lives on in Cyprus.
As does the other variety. “It’s always a mistake to hitch up with someone you meet in the first club as you never know if there might be someone better in the second or the third. Problem is, if you keep on like that, you go home alone,” said one German resident.
A mixture of the familiar and the exotic, with layers of influence from its many colonisers, Cyprus remains an enigma. Visitors return year after year and some settle here. I wonder how many get under the skin of the country, however, and how many want to. In this short trip I only had tantalising glimpses of the real character of Cyprus, but enough to whet my appetite. I’d come back for incongruities like the old woman in black who calmly fished against a backdrop of grand hotels in Agia Napa while tourists paraded along the quay behind her, taking snaps.