Early forecasts show no showers (unlike last night´s predictions). So we (M&M and J and I) drive out past the airport - and the flamingos at rest in the salt lake - and join up with the coast road until we turn north for Lefkara, via a back road into Maroni - a village so silent it could be deserted, with streets no more than eight feet across and little blind corners and dead ends.
Lefkara is known for lace and silver work and is a charming town in the hills, divided into Kato (lower) and Pano (upper) towns. Narrow lanes, stone houses with wooden shutters and women sitting in the sunlight working at lace and embroidery. we´re invited to watch and it is interesting, although we´re not really there to buy, which is a bit awkward. Not nearly as much pressure as usual Maggi assures us.
Over the hills, on an astonishingly good road. We stop at Kato Drys, a tiny village, for a picnic lunch. Only four people in evidence in the village the whole time we´re here, two of them a very young couple on a motorbike who roar past three times, like punctuation in a quirky comedy. There´s a covered well in the middle of the village where we spread out our picnic in the peaceful sunlight. We´re just round the corner from a ruin, the roofless stone arches of an old church on a hillside.
Then back through other loely little villages - Choirokitia (near the neolithic settlement of the same name) where we get directions from two young boys proud of their village, Tochni, and Skarinou. Narrow lanes, dark blue shutters, glimpses of bougainvillea blooming in courtyards, and rosemary in flower by a church. And almost no sign of the blight of huge developments of villas and holiday homes we passed closer to the sea.
JAWORSKI TRAVELS