Hello to everyone!

This last week was the final week in office, catching up some of the work that we will carry out in September, as the Spanish lessons, the workshop of veggie kitchen,… among other activities. The only novelty of the previous week was on Tuesday in the meeting with our coordinator Lefki to speak about how we spent our week in Lofou. Each of the volunteers gave their particular point of view on the week to finally make a general assessment of the festival.

On Wednesday night I was with Manu, my friend from Seville, for a beer and chatting for a while in a park near home. There he was commenting on that over the weekend it had scheduled a camping plan in Akamas, one of the most beautiful and natural landscapes in the Island. Sometimes I find difficult to decide about some plans, so it costed me say yes to the proposal to go together camping to that area, although I finally accepted, and very gratefully. We were already starting to arrange the weekend plan.

On Thursday, more office work and in the night I attended one of the events that our friends volunteer of the Politistiko Ergastiri Association organized. The event in particular was about Portugal. Organized by Benjamin, friend and a Portuguese volunteer of this organization that did a great job making a photographic exhibition on the culture, places and Portuguese characters throughout history. Besides there was a Portuguese film with cultural overtones and was served typical food of the national territory. At the end of the event, Manu, Ángeles and me went to my house to prepare a few CD´s of music for the journey. At the same time, Ángeles, who was not very convinced to come with us, ended up joining the plan. Here the group that Dimitris, my Office Manager, christened “The Spanish Mafia” was created.

At the end of the day of work on Friday in the office, I went back home to prepare my luggage. At 17:00 o’clock would be Manu waiting for me at the front door to load packages. Diving glasses (well, swimming ones), towel, flip flops, tavli, flashlights,… and of course, music. The trip promised. Soon after we went to pick up the travel companions left, Emanuela and Ángeles. Emanuela would accompany us to Pafos, in the middle of the journey, because her friend Laura came from Italy to the city airport and they both had planned a few days of holidays.

We headed to Blue Lagoon with the music really loud. Between the noise of the air entering through the window and that Manu hass a little “lack of hearing”  I believed that it was the only alternative. Anyway, we enjoyed the trip to Paphos. I say to Pafos because, after parking the car, accompanying Manuela to the hostel and returning to the car, we saw that one of the taillights of the car had kept switched on. At that time it came to my mind once when a firend of mine and me runned out of battery, and we had to push the car as a kilometre without success. I started to tell the story while we got into the car, when I saw that Manu couldn’t turn on the car. Imagine the situation: Ángeles pissing of laughing because of the situation, Manu face´s circumstance and me between laughing seeing Ángeles and trying to contain me to express my solidarity with Manu. Then came the legendary phrase of the trip when I asked Manu: is the first time that happens to you? If it weren´t for the context in which I said it, anyone would think that my friend had “blue balls”. The case is that something we had to do, and we did. Ángeles and I started to push the car uphill while Manu tried to turn on the car. There was no way. We decided to put car in reverse to push down. At that time, they were two retirees who had just came out of the retirement home of Paphos playing the tavli, and to see that we needed help, kindly began to push the car with us. Finally and fortunately, we started the car, we said goodbye to the men so nice that they pulled us through and we went to the Mall for supplies.

Still we were 45 minutes to reach our destination. We left mall and close to an hour later, we arrived at the “Baths of Aphrodite”. There, we waited for a 4 by 4 to reach the camp, since the last part of the road was impossible to do it with another car that wasn´t an all-terrain vehicle. But before that, our friends Ilenia, Barbara and Virginia came to the parking, along with two more Cypriots. Two 4 by 4 picked us up and took us to the camp through an rugged trail. We arrived, assembled tents and relaxed a while in the water, before going to rest. The day had been long and the weekend hadn´t done more to start.

On Saturday morning, after an evening concert of snores by me and Manu and which had to suffer to Ángeles and our Cypriot guest, we got up and we walked for 20 minutes to reach the famous beach of crystal clear water and a blue intense call “Blue Lagoon”. There we spent most of the day to soak and enjoy the place. A little before noon appeared there Emanuela and her friend, which was a pleasant surprise. They accompanied us until about 17:00 h and then returned to Pafos. We still at the beach, met some very nice guys who invited us in the evening to dinner “souvla” on their camping area, in one of the coves in the area. We returned to our campsite to rest a little Sun that we had been sticking all day and to relax a while playing the tavli, reading or simply chatting. Above all of the latest from our Cypriot companion, although more than dialoguing that was more like a monologue. There was no who to stop. Around 22:00, a 4 by 4 arrived at our campsite. They were the guys who we met at the beach. They came to pick us up, so we took some drinks that we had and Manu, Ángeles and I went with them. Arriving at the place, the rest of friends were waiting for us, some cooking of chicken, lamb and beef souvla, others simply drinking and chatting. For those who don’t know, the souvla is a Cypriot traditional food which consists of puncturing several pieces of meat on a stick and maket it rotate over hot coals until the meat is cooked. Such things are that you actually introduce into the culture of the place in which you are. After a delicious dinner, we were a while chatting and about 2:00 o’clock back to our tend.

The next morning we got up early, well, some more than others, and took a swim in the cove where we were camped. After the bath, we collected all our things and phoned a kind of 4 by 4 cab to pick us up. The guys who brought us on Friday left on Saturday without warning us and we had to take hold of this service to get to our car. At midday picked us up and took us to our car. We still had left three hours to Nicosia, so better return with time and without haste. On the way back, we stopped at Paphos and did a kind of lunch-dinner to recharge batteries and make the trip in the best conditions.

In the next post next week I will tell about the Greek lessons at the University of Cyprus. See you next week!