Cyprus
- hunting for treasure The sun was still low on the horizon when we left. The
shadows offering us the last delicious coolness before the heat of another August
day set in.
Four
of us were driving in an open top jeep, leaving the villas and the sea behind
and climbing high into the hills above Pafos - to a village named Kamares....
We
were about to do a treasure hunt and this was our starting point. Hilarity and
a dozen ex pats greeted us at the door of the Kamares Club, a whitewashed building
in a newly built whitewashed village, clinging to the edge of the hill. We took
our list of clues and were off.
My
brother-in-law looked knowingly at the first one. 'Tala. It's got to be,' he said
and eased the jeep around another knife-edge bend. Once out of the village the
land quickly became rocky and decked with low olive trees.
It
was easy to imagine the gods playing in their shade.
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The
rocks became fields. Vines appeared. Dotted around them men, labourers who had
left their construction jobs for a month or two, to harvest the grapes. .
From
Tala we headed higher still. The next clue was a poem. It told us to pass an orange
grove and referred to gossip and letters. We scratched our heads and let the road
lead us. Up, the road wound, until we arrived at another village, this time with
impossibly narrow streets, built for donkeys, not cars.
Ancient
white villas clung together. Wrinkled men eyed us between puffs on their pipes.
Geraniums nodded from their window boxes. We abandoned the jeep and set off to
explore.
Letters.
Maybe there was a post office. Seemed unlikely. Just maybe. We began to ask. An
old man pointed with the bowl of his pipe, wondering what the hell four English
people were doing posting letters this far up and looking so damned anxious about
it too.
He
quickly settled himself back down and took a deep, relaxing puff. The day was
too warm, too beautiful to worry about anything. Tomorrow. Worry can always come
tomorrow in Cyprus.
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Heedless
of this infinitely sensible rule we scurried off, as fast as our sandals could
take us and were rewarded with finding a tiny white, one-roomed building.
We
peered inside and looked at each other for reassurance. Were we about to stumble
into someone's living room? We shrugged. 'You want to post a letter?' a woman
in a black shawl asked. 'Go on in!' she added laughing....
story
continues...
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