A lovely stop at Theletra, where there is the new village and the old village, accessed by a road that is little more than a winding track - one farmer using it beeps at all the blind corners, of which there are many. It's not quite abandoned now, as a few people have moved back and begun to restore a half dozen of the traditional Cypriot stone houses. The church has been repaired and is in very good shape. Doug finds a key in the door and we go in to find a couple of icons and beeswax tapers still burning. but overall the place is as silent as a completely deserted vilage, high on a hillside, the farm fields and the travelled road well below. There's little sound beyond the birds or the buzz of an idle fly near the derelict houses. There are pomegranate trees, orange trees, fig trees - and silence.
Then up past Polis on the Akamas Peninsula to Aphrodite's Baths, a grotto pool in the hills, shaded by a fig tree and, by tradition, the place where Aphrodite used to bathe and where she met her lover, Adonis. It's a nice, shady spot, and, as Jenny points out, this is particularly good in the hot, dry summer when the trees and running water provide a welcome respite.
There are miles of nature trails inthe surrounding hills and stunning views of the sea below. In the area below us caravans overlook the sea as well. It's a lovely spot and we all play with the notion of acquiring a caravan. Jenny hears goat bells and eventually we see four sure-footed goats working their way along through the scrub beneath our track.
On the way back we stop at the village of Latchi, a fishing village - aware of its tourist appeal but still a fishing village. They're redoing the harbour - and quite nicely, though they seem to have been redoing it for the last eight years, so it should be starting to look attractive by now. The restaurateur is resignedly amused. They only have two men working on it, he tells us, one of whom is the boss. So the boss mostly supervises, when he's not having coffee. Meanwhile we get a table overlooking a mix of gleaming white yachts and small fishing boats. It's a real fishing village, nets and all. And Jenny and I have the mixed fish plate for lunch. Very nice and filling enormous plates, with a whole red mullet, a whole large sardine and a complete other fish we can't identify, as well as deep fried kalamari and whitebait (dozens, it seems, of the little fish). Plus salad and chips. We can't finish and Joe and Doug, who have ordered curries, find that they are having curry with fish. good food, good view, and a relaxed familial feeling in a family run restaurant - small children in evidence. the kind of experience that is disappearing from the cities in Cyprus, sadly.
Dusk is approaching, so it's a quick stop in the older part of Polis, a nice little town with some medieval remains reminiscent of the stone enclosure of the old caravanserai in Nicosia or the market in Larnaca. We want to get back to Paphos by dark because the road is hilly and winding and the drivers unpredictable. On our way up, a police car was pleased to overtake on a downhill curve as we all held our breath. As we descend to Paphos the lights, first of hillside villages and then of the city and harbour, begin to twinkle.
Tea and biscuits at our flat before we say goodbye. doug and Jenny will be flying back to London on Wednesday. It's been lovely being here at the same time.