Cyprus - Lounging around and wreck diving

We had about 5 days on Cyprus and as tempting as it was to sit under the umbrella on the sun bed for the whole time, we actually managed to do a couple of other things! When we arrived we got a hire car and by the time we got to our hotel in Agia Napa, it was time for dinner. We didnt last long as I had had a couple of days in a row of early starts and late finishes...



Anyhow we spent the next day on the beach and beside the pool. It turns out we were in an area very popular with Russians, mostly groups of 2 or 3 girls. It seems that the latest fashion for them is to wear g-string (thong) bikinis with bikini tops optional and mostly discouraged. There were a few Russian blokes about with small skin tight bathers on with some superb mullets. I almost felt a bit silly in my knee length board shorts! (almost...not quite)



The next day I arranged to do a dive on the wreck of the Zenobia, a Swedish ferry that sank off the coast of Larnaca. Check out http://www.buddydivers.com/Sites/Zenobia/Zenobia.html. I had to do a refresher dive as it had been about 3 years since my last dive so I did a shallow shore dive for about an hour where I fed some fish and even played with a little squid! The following day I did 2 dives down to 30m on the wreck and it was very cool. I swum around the propellers and looked in to semi trailers stacked up on their sides.



On our 2nd last day we went for a trip to Nicosia (Lefkosia to the locals) which is the capital of Cyprus. It was quite interesting for the fact that it is a divided city between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot sides. We crossed in to Northern Cyprus which is currently occupied by Turkey (or a seperate country of Turkish North Cyprus if you ask them) via an opening in the buffer zone (check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ledra_Street). Its a strip of land about 50 - 100m wide through the city (about a block) which has been left empty as a no mans land between the two sides, patrolled by the UN. We only stayed long enough for a coke as I had to get back to Greek Cyprus and put more money in the parking meter!!!

The next day we packed up our gear and flew over to the second island in our holiday-Malta!!