Almost anyone coming to Cyprus as a tourist visits Petra Tou Romio also known as the Aphrodite’s rock, the place where Aphrodite was born out of foam. If you are not interested in mythology, you can still visit this place for its scenic beauty.

You can go to Aphrodite’s rock from the highway between Limassol and Pafos. The exit then goes for a while along the sea before coming to the parking for the actual place. You then cross the road through a under-bridge and come out onto the beach where you can see the actual rock.

Just as you reach the sea, you will see few viewpoints where you can stop and enjoy the work of nature on the limestone cliffs.

If you have the energy and time, you can do a bit of exploring. Just before the first viewpoint, there is a narrow path down to the beach. If no path exists, just scramble down. Then, keep going to the left until see rock formations. They are beautiful and you can spend hours climbing the cliffs and going inside the small caves formed by the cliffs.

If you are not the kind who enjoys climbing all the rocks, just sit back and enjoy the beautiful sunset on this beach.

The annual spring flower festival happens in the yermasogia area near the parking lot. The parking lot is converted into a flower show and there is a parade (a smaller version of the limassol carnival) on the the beach road, with flowers being the theme

The tradition is for the kids on the float to throw the flowers to the onlookers. The people on the side of the streets are very eager to catch the thrown flowers. Probably, they are owners of flower shops and they just want to stock up on the flowers . Even Anith managed to catch some flowers. More photos from the parade…

When i came to Cyprus in 2001, the first year was spent on visting all the regular touristy places like the Baths of Aphrodite, Rock of Aphrodite, Polis etc. After that, i started googling about Cyprus and started getting info on off-beat places like Avakas Gorge, Kelefos bridge etc. After a few years, i realised that Cyprus had something to offer in every nook and corner and hence i started visting every place marked with a brown board: A brown board is used in Cyprus to signify something of touristic interest. This “Giant Oak tree” was on one such board.

On the way to troodos from Limassol, around a 100 metres beyond the laneia police station (the only police station on the route), you will find a brown board saying “Giant Oak Tree – 400 m” pointing into a small lane towards the right. You can take your car inside this line and will be surprised to find big apartments built a little further down this lane. After few metres, the board points towards the left. It is better to park the car here and walk the final stretch as taking the car down this part would be a little difficult.

We went during Spring and the whole area was filled with all kinds of colurful flowers. We spent around 15 minutes at this place taking photographs from various angles. Anith even tried, though unsuccessfully, to climb the tree.

Harish and Anith took many of my photos and put them on top of a Cyprus Map as a collage. Must have been lot of work. This is the photo which is currently the wallpaper on my laptop. You can find a higher resolution picture (2.5 MB) here.

An earthquake of magnitude 4.5 on the Richter scale shook Cyprus on August 25th (Tuesday). The epicentre was pretty close to Limassol, occurring near Amathus. But, nothing much happened because of this, just that people were shaken up a bit!
In fact, Cyprus is very close to a highly seismic zone. There is a major fault running through (or very near to) Cyprus. You can actually see the fault. If you go to lady’s mile beach (on the road from My Mall), you turn right at the T-junction to go to Akrotiri lake whereas to the left, the road stops. If you wade into the beach from just to the right of the t-junction, you should see a drop of a feet or so on the sea floor within a few metres from the shore. This is a faultline. This goes in a diagonal direction towards the sea , so goes further in as you go on lady’s mile beach towards Akrotiri. I accidentally noticed this. Once i was snorkelling close to the shore (close – very close as i dont know the ABCs of swimming) and i drifted off a bit. Suddenly, i saw the sea floor much deeper than i would have liked it to be. I panicked and waded towards the shore. Then i noticed the sharp drop on the floor.
Cyprus has had its share of mild earthquakes before. In the late 90s, there was a medium intensity earthquake, the effects of which can be seen on some of the old residential apartments on the beach road. I hope that there are no after-shocks of this earthquake, except the artificial ones to be created by the Israelis!!