Woke up to clear blue skies and - could it be? - a hint of warmth in the air. My experience of Cyprus By Winter has been surprisingly chilly - although I fully expect it to warm up the day after I leave. But today was a late gift, and I enjoyed wandering along the harbour at Aiya Napa (complete with strolling kitties who wound around my ankles and purred like little machines when I petted them). Later I found funny a lady who stopped in her own walk to enjoy two small birds walking across her way, until I realised that my enjoyment of these cats probably looked similar to the Cypriots. Just part of the landscape. I enjoyed all the blue and white of the harbour, and then went on to the sea caves for a walk along the edge of the rocks, taking great joy in the absence of barriers or guardrails, making it feel , as a friend put it, "like you are the first person to discover it". I did have a second stalker experience here, but it is conceivable that this one genuinely wanted to point out good photo opportunities, as he spoke very little English and gave up after I showed little enthusiasm for following him to a hidden cave. Strangely enough, after he rounded the corner he disappeared completely, which was very odd!
As the sun began to set, I drove up to Cape Greco, up a winding dirt road which was, if possible, worse than the road to the sea caves. I gloried in the 4x4 truck my firends have loaned me here. I think I will buy one - they're terribly handy! I wandered up the path to watch the sun set at the Cape, and passed several ladies holding bouquets of picked wildflowers. One couple I passed was in a friendly argument, the man careering all over the hillside rooting out a massive bunch of flowers for his lady, who seemed slightly pleased but embarrassed that he was picking so many. "You need to save them for Nature," she said, and her man responded, "for Rachel? who's Rachel?" and continued picking. "You see, where there are ten flowers, I pick only three," he explained, leaping from flower bunch to flower bunch, dashing left and then right. "Leaving seven for...Nature!" He beamed cheerfully and dashed across the path to pick more. I think his mathematics would be more effective if he was the only one picking flowers, but there certainly seemed many to choose from. 
After the sunset, I returned to Larnaka and went for a very good meal at Art Cafe 1900, a French restaurant with every variety of photo and painting and artistic representation plastered on the walls until there was very little room for wall at all. There were little blue tables and white tablecloths that looked like something out of a French farmhouse, and meals served on blue and white dishes in the same vein. They generously gave us a miniature glass of dessert wine afterwards, which for me was just the right amount. We went back down the stairs past a bar that had been completely empty three hours previously, and now was so crowded we could barely push through, and the air filled with smoke. We wandered the seafront and then the streets, and I enjoyed the lights strung across the buildings, loosely, as though just flung there. Every street was deserted and the air was warm...it was beautiful.
Walk length: 1.5 hours
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