This year's summer holiday for my beloved and me has taken the form of a two-centre (look at me! travel trade lingo!) event starting with a visit to lovely friends Nigel and Sarah in Cyprus. This is my second trip to their beautiful home but the first for my beloved. We were made very welcome by our lovely hosts and we enjoyed a few days of relaxing, catching up, eating, drinking, tennis with the Nomads and ...snakes.
My children will confirm that I am not keen on reptiles generally. I can handle (though not literally) a small gekko, but anything bigger - and particularly one without actual feet - is a scary prospect. Indeed, when I used to take the children to Regents Park Zoo, I would wait outside while they went in the reptile house. No, reptiles are not for me.
I know from my previous visits to Cyprus that there are snakes of the poisonous and non-poisonous varieties but until this occasion, I hadn't actually come nose to nose with one. On a walk through the forest, with two sturdy men with sticks, Sarah and I encountered my first black snake, whisking rapidly off the path and into the undergrowth before we got too near. We grabbed each other, shrieked, and looked for support but naturally the sturdy men with sticks were at least 50 yards behind and of no conceivable use. Unscathed but more nervous than before, my beloved and I were then told about the snakes in the pump room UNDER THE HOUSE!!! "We think they're breeding so we don't want to disturb them." Me: "How many babies do they have?" "Over a hundred." Eek!
Then we actually saw the snaky couple - one about six foot, the daddy nearer eight, attempting to climb up the wall of the house! Now I'm checking under the bed, locking the bedroom door and going nowhere near the ssssnake - sorry - pump room. What may have saved my bacon was the arrival of a big digger in the garden bringing two huge ancient wine jars as garden ornaments. I can only assume that the vibration of the heavy machinery scared the snakes off because we didn't see them or any of their potentially huge family again - phew!
Our other adventure was accidental gate-crashing. In the spirit of 'go large or go home!' we decided we would go for drinks at the beautiful 5* Anassa Hotel which is seriously high-end (millionaire Philip Green had his 50th birthday party there with a gang of supermodels and celebrities). We were warmly greeted by staff in the car park, taken by golf buggy to the front entrance and we made our way through the elegant marble foyer to the terrace. We were offered champagne cocktails which initially we refused but the waiting staff were so persistent that we felt it would be rude to say no. We sat admiring the view, drinking cocktails and politely refusing canapés when we became aware that we were receiving less than friendly glares from a smartly-dressed gentleman who appeared to be hosting a big group. Finishing our drinks, we got up to leave but were detained by a professional photographer who insisted on taking our picture and then kindly took some more on our phones. It was only when we made out way back into the hotel that we glanced behind us to see that we had joined in a private cocktail party. Oh dear! Fun though!
Our few days with Nigel and Sarah came to an end but the bit of the holiday that I was nervous about (before I knew about the snakes, obviously) was just beginning. Bit of background required here: Back in the 1970s there was a civil war in Cyprus between the Greek Cypriots (now living in the country we know as Cyprus) and the Turkish Cypriots, resulting in a division of the country which runs through the capital, Nicosia. The hostilities are still so keenly felt by both the Greek and Turkish Cypriots that the border was only opened to Cypriots in 2003, some thirty years after the war. Parts of Turkish Cyprus are still no-go areas, most notably Famagusta which had been regarded as one of the most beautiful beach resorts in the world. Travel between Cyprus and mainland Turkey for the most part does not exist and no airport in Cyprus flies to mainland Turkey.
So how to get from Cyprus to Kalkan in Turkey? Our lovely hosts offered to drive us across the border in Nicosia to Ercan Airport in Turkish Cyprus from whence we could fly to Antalya in mainland Turkey and drive to Kalkan. We queued at the border in Nicosia watched over by gun-toting Greeks and then gun-toting Turks having driven through the UN peace-keeping zone between the two countries. I know some people do this every day, but for me, it was nerve-wracking. Particularly when they took our passports and Nigel had to go back and get them a few minutes later.
Our impression of Turkish Cyprus? We were only on the (almost empty) main road to the airport but there is lots of new build, flash car showrooms, impressive university buildings, big statement Turkish flags but precious few people. Our hosts were going on to Kyrenia for the weekend so they will have a better understanding.
Saying goodbye to our lovely friends, we headed into the airport and all went swimmingly until we went through passport control. I am one of those people who seldom has the appropriate riposte at the right moment and I often wake up in the middle of the night thinking of what I should have said but wasn't quick-witted enough at the time. For once, I managed to avoid dropping myself in it... "Which airport did you fly into?" the uniformed customs official asked, examining my passport. Clearly the answer to this question was not Paphos! "We're flying to Antalya," I answered guilelessly. He stared hard at me - we are so obviously tourists and this is not a tourist route. Eventually - long pause - he said "No matter," and handed me back my passport. Phew!
So we flew from Ercan to Antalya in a packed plane of Turkish people and one cat, endured the usual car hire shenanigans and managed to get so spectacularly lost in Antalya that we finished up on the hairpin bends of the coast road at two o'clock in the morning. But we made it to number 2 and J Stocko's pad in Kalkan and perhaps we won't try that route again.
And finally... A little knowledge is a dangerous thing... I have an app on my phone called Find My Friends. It should actually be renamed Find My Children. I use it to track offspring primarily so I know they're safe. I know, I know, I'm a mum, I can't help it. So I was checking whether number 4 was working a night shift at the hospital in London where she is a nurse the other evening about 10.20pm Turkey time. She was, and so whilst I was on the app I checked number 2 who was also still at work. Number 3 won't engage in this - he calls it stalking. Hmmm... But number 1 appeared to be at Harrogate Hospital. And she's 37 weeks pregnant!!!!!! Panic! I ring my son-in-law. "You're at the Hospital!!!! What's going on?????" "It's a secret" he says conspiratorially before telling me that it's only 8.20 in the UK and they are at ante-natal class. I could hear them giggling from 2,000 miles away. I am a fool.
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