In the past 18 months I’ve made two trips to the reasonably small, politically divided island nation of Cyprus.

That may not seem like such a fantastical disclosure but up until Marco Baghdatis’ thrilling, surprising run to the Australian Open final in 2006 I’m not 100% sure I knew Cyprus existed. Okay, so that may be a slight exaggeration, I had definitely heard of it before the exuberant Cypriot won the hearts of Australia with his hard-court hustle. I knew that it has something to do with Greece and that it also maybe had something to do with Turkey and, if pressed, I probably could have placed it somewhere in the Mediterranean, but that’s just about it.

But enough about my geographical/geopolitical ignorance, the point of that opening statement is that life will take you places you never expected, both literally and metaphorically, and it can be strange to think back to where you were yesterday, last week, last year and compare that to where you might be tomorrow, next week, next year.

Again, not such an earth-shattering revelation but here I am, two 28,000+ kilometre round trips under my belt, ready to tell you a little bit about what I experienced in this little republic in the east-Mediterranean.

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My first trip was got under way in August 2016 and was to be the first leg in a rather ambitious voyage that also included stops (and stopovers) in Vienna, London, Manchester, Toronto and, the less said about this part the better, Vancouver. Maybe I’ll comment on the rest of the rip later but for now, let’s keep talking about Cyprus.

Landing at Larnaca international airport sometime in the late morning it didn’t take me long to make a poor impression when I couldn’t tell the just-pleasant-enough border security officer where it was I would be staying whilst in Cyprus. I did tell him that I was there to visit my dad, who had moved to the island for work about 8 months prior but could not for the life of me remember and address or even the name of the city. In fact, I still can’t remember the address. The city though is Nicosia or Lefkosia, a.k.a. the capital city of Cyprus. Something that shouldn’t be that hard to remember but, you know, border security can be quite intimidating.

Making it through unscathed I was greeted in arrivals by my mum, in the car park by my dad and then back at my dad’s spacious, air-conditioned (very important!) home by my brother and his girlfriend. Yes, this was going to be a ‘getting the gang back together’ type of trip, only with ‘the gang’ replaced by ‘my family’. It was also the first time that this combination of people had ever taken a trip together so a new experience all around.

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A quick summary of how the rest of the family found themselves in Cyprus:

• As previously mentioned, my dad moved there for work at the beginning of 2016. He designs/builds/maintains systems that run your ABC iView, SBS on Demand type services. I think, please don’t ask me to elaborate
• My mum arrived in Cyprus about 2-weeks before I did. She was testing the waters for what was to be a full-time move there at the start of 2017
• My brother and his girlfriend made their way to Cyprus via mainland Greece and the Grecian islands about 3 days before I arrived.

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And so there we all there, gathering our bearings in the (almost) unavoidable searing heat, deciding on how best to spend the next 10 days together.

The answer, without going into too much detail, is essentially your classic tale of eat, drink and be merry. As you might expect if you know a little about both Greek and Turkish cuisine, the food was high in salt and olive oil content and delicious. Being satisfied with anything that includes meat, cheese and bread, I was quite at home and might even have managed to squeeze a bit of Haloumi onto my plate at every meal; breakfast, lunch and dinner. My brother on the other hand was undertaking a bit of a vegetarian adventure on this trip and he found himself equally content with fantastic selections of fresh vegetables. And of course, the seafood there is rather spectacular with the Octopus being one that I couldn’t quite work up the courage to sample.

As for the drink, I was looking forward to imbibing my fair share of Ouzo on this trip having acquired the taste for aniseed-like beverage a few years earlier. What I was surprised to learn was that the most popular drink on the island is known as Zivania, a distilled Grape drink that is colourless, has raisin armours and will knock you into next week in the blink of an eye. After a couple of attempts at acquiring the taste, and necessary constitution, myself and the rest of the family settled on Cyprus next most popular beverage, beer.

Which brings us to the be merry part of the trip.

We started with a couple of simple day trips to the beach, quite easy because, despite being in Nicosia, almost the exact centre of the island, we were never more than 2 and a bit hours from anywhere we wanted to be. In fact, from end to end you can get from Dipkarpaz in the far north-east, to Paphos in the south-west in a little under 4 hours if all breaks for you. And take advantage of the accessible proximity we did. The day trips were followed by a 3-night getaway to the North side where stunning beaches were juxtaposed with dusty mountain tracks and only a day after returning to the city we found ourselves on a drive to the aforementioned Paphos, to the remotest of remote hotels, via a precarious 4WD drive route as breathtakingly beautiful as it was precarious.

The highlight of these many sojourns would be the stay at the Adonis Palace where a former Cypriot movie star decided to get away from it all, build a hotel far off the beaten track in the Kili mountains and start taking people on tours of the nearby Adonis baths where, as tradition says, Adonis, the God of Beauty, and his wife Aphrodite, the Goddess of love, raised their many children. I’m sure you can Google the rest of the story but the stunning waterfall and tranquil pools where something to behold and the statues of ludicrously endowed Adonis raised an eyebrow or two.

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What have I leaned on these two trips? That Cyprus, whether you know much or little about it’s history, culture and/or geography, is an exciting, varied holiday destination. More importantly though, I’ve learned that even tough I consider myself lucky enough to have travelled more than the average person has during my time, I still have a lot of the world to experience and I’m not quite ready to call myself ‘well-travelled’. Fortunately (lock on wood), I still have plenty of time to take in amazing new destinations and I intend on keeping a wide-open mind because I have no idea where it is I’ll be surprised to have visited a year, 5 years, 10 years from now.

James Farish-Carradice