TheBanyanTree: Peter and Chris hit Larnaca

[Peter Macinnis]

At 10:48 21/05/04 +1000, I wrote:

>Then we made our big mistake.

April 15

I am not quite sure what made us do it, but we managed to propose that the
airline book our bags straight through to Cyprus. By the time we landed in
Paris, I was nervous. I knew what the baggage handling is like at Charles
de Gaulle, so we went and watched the carousel until our flight's baggage
was all out -- and our bags were not there. Reassured to know that it was
in safe hands, we went to relax as well as we could.  It was now almost 7
am in Paris, and little was happening, but I found a source of coffee and
tea, some quiet tables and a seller of newspapers.

Nine hours is a long time to spend sitting down, so we kept moving around
to new and better spots, only to decide that there were too many smokers,
loud talkers or whatever, so we would move again. We would go to see if we
could check in for the flight to Cyprus, but all was dead. Then we got
there to find bedlam, with teenagers all over the place -- all the French
language students from Limassol had been in Paris, and they were on our plane.

We checked on our bags, and were reassured all was well, but we still felt
a few worries. Still, there was nothing we could do.

The problem with schoolkids is that they all want to rearrange their
seating, so the plane was in chaos for almost half an hour before the
teachers snapped out of their trances, bulldozed the kids into seats, and
we were able to take off. That meant we were late, and came in after an
Aeroflot plane, and had to queue behind them.

One of the surprises to us was the number of Russians and other Slavs
there, but Cypriot authorities were being very careful. We had left the EU
when we left France, but the EU was only a few days behind, and they were
scrutinising each Aeroflot passenger was given a long and slow appraisal
(by contrast, when we got there, the chap grinned, whacked his stamp on
each passport and waved us through.

Behind us in the queue, there was a bunch of whining white
upper-middle-class Americans on some sort of pilgrimage. One of them in
particular, who seemed to be the tour leader, should have been fitted with
an airtight helmet at birth, as she kept up a tirade about third world
countries and how they could organise nothing. I was sorely tempted to
point out to her that the people she was bagging were also speakers of
English, and that she was doing her country no good at all. Something in
Chris' eye made me desist, just.

We got through ahead of the whining pilgrims and found a deserted hall: the
bags were long gone, the teenagers were gone, the Aeroflot people were
gone, and our bags weren't there. Our first thought was that a couple of
indigent East Europeans had taken our bags instead, but the pilgrims had
more handsome luggage, and they all got theirs as they came through.
Clearly, our bags were somewhere between Singapore and Cyprus, probably in
the bowels of CdG.  We recorded this with a girl who said she had never
heard of the Onisillos Hotel, but laboriously and grudgingly wrote the
details down.

So there we were, 31 hours from our last shower, assured there was no such
hotel as the one we were booked into, with toothbrushes and a change of
underwear, and a long way from our bags. I got some Cyprus pounds, grabbed
a cab, established that he knew our hotel, and headed for it. The worst was
past, more or less.

This was a two-star hotel, which meant that it had a shower, but the rules
do not preclude a shower fit only for anorexic pipe cleaners. We washed as
best we could, and slept.

April 16
The next morning we headed down to breakfast, knowing only that it would be
near reception, but a friendly old lady took us in hand. We would sit
there, we would find coffee and tea there, we would find milk there as soon
as she fetched it, this was our bread, cheese and meat, this was our jam,
we had lost our bags but we should not worry, as Nikko would fix it. This
was a woman who had never allowed a crisis to happen, the sort of person
who should run the Middle East. We warmed to her.

While we saw some cattle on Cyprus, there were many more goats, and the
cheese was goat-milk cheese, which squeaks on the teeth, a bit like nails
on a blackboard, but less annoying.

Nikko (I think that  was his name) was a thin version of Telly Savalas, and
as we finished eating, he swung into action. He rang Cyprus airways and in
an authoritative tone that lay over the Greek, he laid into them. Within
five minutes, he was able to tell us that the bags had been located in
Paris, and would be there that night. He gave us maps, pamphlets, told us
the best things to see, established our interests and added a few more, and
had us raring to go in another five minutes. So armed with a map, we set
off to explore Larnaca.

Cyprus remains a divided island -- the Greeks voted to remain divided while
we were there, but Chris and I noted that our part of town had Turkish
street names, and we found a couple of deserted mosques. Some of the houses
were empty as well -- but one day the Turks will return. For now, it was
ethnically cleansed.

Cypriots drive on the left as we do, so we flt safe in the crooked, narrow
streets, laid down centuries ago with no consideration for the needs of the
motor vehicle, or the pedestrian contending with vehicles. Luckily, the
Cypriots value the tourist industry and prefer not to run strangers over.
Houses are built mainly of reinforced concrete, and invariably the top
floor has reinforcing rods poking up, ready to take the next floor. Yards
are typically tiled or cemented, probably because of the dust, because this
part of Cyprus is very dry.

There is a constant feeling of surprise because streets wind and swirl,
perhaps reflecting the locations of large trees, a millennium or two back,
because this is an old landscape, where original frontages reflect large
slabs of history. Cars park on the pavements of the sidewalks (an
appropriate term to apply here to something less than a path). Where people
have tired of cars parking, large flower pots are placed to make parking
hard. They don't do a lot for pedestrians.

We had been directed on a route to Agios Lazaros. Everything in the Greek
part of Cyprus is Agios or Agia something -- it is the Greek form of San or
Santa. Agios Lazaros was something special, though, the tomb of Lazarus,
who came here after he was raised from the dead, died again, and lacking a
good ER unit, was buried. Muhammad's auntie came here and died as well,
because Cyprus is not that far from Beirut, and made a good bolt-hole in
times of trouble.

Agios Lazaros is a true gem of Byzantine overkill. Icons, gold leaf and
paint on everything, candles galore, and a crypt where Lazaros lies to this
day, under a Byzantine floor of reinforced concrete . . . well, maybe they
did a few running repairs, but that is the effect. The crypt is filled with
small bags of something or other, some of them cloth, but one was a plastic
Marks and Sparks bag. We never did find out what they were for, but it was
clearly a well-established tradition to leave them.

Sated, we moved on. In true Macinnis tradition, we knew where all the
museums were, and we were determined to get the lot.  Silly us.

Museums vary tremendously, but they are made of two parts: the collections
of objects, and the way they are interpreted and presented.  Cyprus has
brilliant objects and collections, apart from all the stuff stolen by the
English, Americans and Germans, but they have no idea of presentation or
interpretation (with a few brave exceptions), so if you arrive ignorant,
you will go away impressed, but just as ignorant.

We went first to the museum run by the Demos Larnakos, the Muncipality of
Larnaka, which we knew to be the second best collection in town, where we
found good stuff, but almost no interpretation. It had, however, an
excellent elderly guard who followed us, assessed us as interested, and so
told us about the material out the back.

"You can photograph it", he said, eyeing my unused camera. "And if you go
around the tennis court, you can see the excavation of the boatyard."

The "material out the back" had no explanation, but I found an edge-roller
mill, of the sort used to crush olives (and sugar cane), and so we
identified another olive press as well, but then we headed for the boatyard.

Luckily, his instructions were inexact, and in the process of following
them, we found ourselves following signs to Old Kition, a far larger
excavation, and one that was brilliantly interpreted in explanatory signs
with photographs overlain with colour coding, all placed on walkways that
carry you over the top of the excavation. Somewhere on Cyprus, there must
be a large factory making these walkways . . .

And then on the way back, we found the old boat yard. It was nothing much
to write home about, but we didn't care. We wandered into town and had
lunch, then prowled the streets, marking down where clothing shops were,
just in case the bags did not show up.

That brought us to the Municipal Markets of Demos Larnakos, and face to
face with suchuko. This is made like a taper candle, starting with nuts on
a string, lowered into a vat of corn flour, grape juice and sugar, a bit
like loukoumia (aka "Turkish Delight", but not in Greek Cyprus) though less
sweet. This was immediately added to our list of staples for the walking
trip to come.

On the plane flying over, I found that the local beer was Leon, so I asked
for one, but the steward brought a Keo instead. I later found that KEO is
the Cypriot Orthodox Church (Eglesia), and the Church sells Keo wine, beer,
and all sorts of other goods. We would consume a lot  of Keo before we were
done.

We got into some that night -- and some Keo wine as well, when we headed
off down to the waterfront, in the tourist strip, close by the old Turkish
fort, later a British fort with a gallows room that was added by the
British. The first is now mainly noticeable as an impediment to traffic,
which hurtles down the waterfront, somehow avoiding pedestrians, and then
whirls around three sides of the fort before hurtling on again. Safe from
the traffic, we ate mezze that kept on coming and coming. Chris got used to
these in Turkey a couple of years ago, I know them from eating Greek food
in Sydney when I was a union official, many moons ago, but never like this.

The owner was delighted at having Australians -- most Cypriots seem to have
family or friends in Oz, and I suspect he boosted the serves, but we had
dined well at lunch as well, and needed a good walk after. Back at the
hotel, we were assured the bags would be here soon, and then came a phone
call: the plane had been delayed two hours, but it was now on our way, and
so were our bags -- and in the end, we fell upon our Luggage with all the
enthusiasm of Rincewind, and we calmed down.

By now we had met the first of our walking party, a Brit called Colin, who
had flown in from Abu Dhabi, but who clearly preferred to do his own thing,
so we left him to it.

April 17
Reunited with our bags, we were able to lash out on clean clothes all round
-- by now, i had bought myself a Cyprus t-shirt because the other one was
showing signs of life, but we were now able to take off  for more distant
regions, knowing we did not need to find clothing shops and re-equip
ourselves.

This was Saturday, so most of Larnaca was out on the streets, and between
our second and third museums, we saw more people with banners, shirts and
caps saying "OXI", which is the Greek for "no".  I wanted to stay out of it
-- this was the weekend before a referendum about linking the two halves of
the island, but Chris stopped and asked them what they were campaigning
for. We were from Australia, she added -- in some places, Australians try
to make sure they are not taken for Americans (assumed to be rich and have
pickable pockets), but here, it was more important not to be taken for
British.

An older man said  (surprise, surprise!) that he had family in Sydney and
launched into a history of Cyprus. Basically, he said, they were being
asked to vote "yes" and put their trust in the Turkish army. That, he said,
they would never do.

Now a bit of background here: the Turks did horrid things when they
invaded, but the Greeks, back in the time of the colonels, caused the
problem in the first place by plotting to annex the island. There are no
good guys in this story. The island is in a mess, where there can be no
just solution, because the Turks brought in people who took over Greek
houses in the north and have nowhere to go, yet the Greeks, understandably,
want their houses back. In at least one case, an Irish family has "bought"
a Greek house, and when the Greeks went back recently, told them to bugger
off. If the Greeks get justice, the Irish lose a house they have done quite
a lot of work on.  No solution can deliver justice to all. 

Anyhow, we decided not to say any of that, we just played dumb, took in the
facts, and mooched on.  I regretted later that I did not buy an OXI t-shirt
to wear, but then again, I have Turkish friends as well, so maybe it is
best as is -- what is light fun to us may be rather more to them.

We headed on to our next museum, but I want to hark back to the first one,
perhaps the worst-curated museum I have ever seen.  We wandered in, hoping
to see local fossils and maybe some geological background, maybe even a few
models showing what was where.  We found a cast of a skull that I
recognised as a 125,000-year-old Rhodesian human with a few unusual
features -- I examined the original in London in 1993, I know it inside
out, and it is totally unrelated to anything on Cyprus.

The rest of the material was equally inapposite, as was the geological
information provided by the lady who came in from reading her paper in the
sun.  We were Australian? Where from?  Which part of Sydney?  She had been
to Manly on the ferry -- and, of course, she had family there.  Sadly, she
knew nothing about geology or fosils, but nonetheless, she was in charge of
explaining it all, so we listened politely and made our escape.

The day's other two museums, the Pierides (brilliant collections, snooty
staff, woeful interpretation) and the natural history museum, lots of
stuffed animals and birds, oodles of insects, no information on habits or
localities, many of the specimens ravaged by time, gave us a bit more, but
it was time to strike out.

Our hotel man had filled us in on an interesting ruin, of an aqueduct thyat
was used to bring in water up until the 1930s, when a pipeline replaced it,
and which lead pas a salt lake with birds, and so back to the hotel, or if
we went the other way, to a marvellous restaurant.  Sadly, we needed to be
back at the hotel to meet our guide and party, so we grabbed a cab to be
driven to the other end of the line.

Our driver sounded fairly Russian, and told us that for two months each
year, he visits Russia to see his girl-friend (his term), when it is too
cold to go out (nudge, wink to me), and there is no work on Cyprus.

He dropped us at the point he said was best, pointed us along the way, and
after I found the map I had dropped, we set off.

Cyprus has a Mediterranean climate (amazing!), just like Australia, but we
were unprepared for the mass of Australian vegetation: the whole area is
being taken over by a wattle we identify tentatively as Acacia saligna,
known as a menace in South Africa as well. It seems this was brought in to
provide feed, tanbark for tanning, and firewood.  In the next week, we
would see many Australian plants on the  island, some of them doing quite
well at spreading, and this an area of major biodiversity, at the
intersections of Asia, Adrica and Europe.  Harrumph.

Our map was clearly a little elderly, but we had enough to go on, and while
the birds were a little sparse (a Finnish birder told us on the track that
we should have been there a month earlier), therewas enough to satisfy us.

We got back, had a shower in the coffin-sized (well, if they make slim
coffins for anorexics, it was coffin-sized) shower, hiked off downtown for
a beer, and back for a meeting with our guide, who told us that even if we
were told to meet her at 5 pm, she needed to get the British contingent 

And so it came about, an hour or two later, that we met our fellow-walkers:
one Kiwi, two Australians, two Canadians, a South African and a mixed bag
of Poms . . .

The next morning, we headed off.


  _--|\    Peter Macinnis                 macinnis at ozemail.com.au
 /     \   Cross-cultural watercraft maker, polymorphic monohulls 
 \.--._*   and Delphic coracles a specialty, also Tribo-economics
      v    http://members.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/index.htm