Sculpture Park Ayia Napa

This will be the last holiday post from me, with a trip to the Sculpture park on the outskirts of Ayia Napa.

It seems that wherever I go, cactus stuff seems to find me. We saw signs to this up at the crossroads in Ayia Napa, near the harbour and looking at my phone back at the hotel it seems its some way outside of town. And could be walked to, if you wanted a long walk. 

Big mistake, its quite a way outside town and if you are situated at the Nissi Beach end its quite a walk. If you are based in Ayia Napa itself and are slightly outside town, then this is quite doable.

We got about halfway and my map lead us to the Tourist information office so we popped in to get directions. The upshot of this was, get the bus by the big I heart Ayia Napa sculpture in town and then go a few stops to get there.

Is it worth going?.

In a word, yes. And if you don't like cacti its still worth going as that bit is across the bridge, so you can skip it if you wish..

There is quite a few sculptures dotted around this dry and quite arid landscape, they are mostly modern art in style but are also many well done. The bridge in particular is a fine example with its metal gods (I clocked a Herakles, Athene with owl and Poseidon) and numerous photo ops.  But also be on the lookout for a cheeky Minotaur, Large owl and Athene and a Trojan Horse. There are some hippos too, for you to look out for.  And finally there are a few you can climb on to take your photo.

Seems Legit

Cactus Park Portion

The latter half past the bridge is a cactus garden. Mainly showing plenty of the larger species that are too big for pot culture outside larger gardens.

You may think it'll be non stop tall Agave and Opuntia and you'd be sort of right as they are well represented here. You may think they'd have the larger cactiform Euphoriba's that you can see on the main drag and you'd be wrong, as the main Euphorbia is the native Greek Spiny Spurge, Euphorbia Acanthothamnos which acts like a small hedge in places growing between the rocks.

Mostly though it is Opuntia, with an even split between prickly pear types and Cholla. This includes the most evil spined species of all, Cylindropuntia Tunicata, and its rather nice pinkish flowers.

Polaskia and attendant ant.

Other species include some of the bigger Aloes such as Ferox, an old man cactus, and a few of the more obscure species including  Polaskia Chichipe with its yellowy green flowers.

Finally the last part is a Mediterranean garden collecting together the wild flowers that grow in the region. Although I fully suspect this is just a wild and untamed area.  Look out for Agama lizards here, and butterflies. We saw a Bath White as well as Swallowtail, along with a few Painted Ladies.

Info.

Sculpture Park Ayia Napa. Free admission. Buses: From Nissi Beach, 101. From Protaras, 102.

Ayia Napa resort and wildlife

So Ayia Napa then. A UK Garage hot spot back in the late 90's and such its branded as one of those party towns, and place that we visited for a day some ten years later.  Our hotel was the Tasia Maris Sands a small and friendly place overshadowed by massive building works going on in the vicinity. 

The staff were very nice bar one miserable cow on reception, but we'll let that slide.  There was a buffet style diner, with a limited but good stock of stuff to eat.  I miss having sausage rolls for breakfast as they were replaced with olive rolls which weren't that nice. Also really liked the Apple Baklava they served as well as spinach pie and dolmades (stuffed vine leaves, which always taste of lemon). As you can guess I go fully native when I'm abroad.

Cool Dude

Quite a nice area actually, despite it being Ayia Napa, there is no UKG now, replaced by Elevator Dance Music its bland equivalent.  If you like the main drag, and innumerable cunts on quad bikes and motorised scooters then be my guest Ayia is great. Me I'll be down on the wasteland with the plants.  As you can tell I'm no fan of Fuck off, Fuck off, Ayia Napa.

The harbour area is better and there are some good places but mostly its bars and clubs and the attendant pricks they bring. Also a metric fuckton of russians.  

Highlights of this being some little dude with a smaller version of the troll guy shirt I was wearing. His mum was hot and also a Slav.

I also regret not snapping the strip club with a Costa coffee next door. I guess there is a market for combined lapdance / coffee bar. You could call it Starfucks.

Waiting 3 hours for your main to arrive.

Also, look out around 8 pm in the evening in certain spots for wild cats. They hang around to get fed and are adorable. My favourite must be a man ginger clone who is often on his own but if you offer food then a load will rush out of the bushes to meet you.  Cyprus has capitalised on this and you can buy cards, and other tat with strays on.  

Those not prepared to wait can go down the beach and look under the trees for a glimpse of several shoe persons asleep and awake. Includes a small Morgana type black and white with one eye. 

Plants. and other stuff.

Black Chamaleon Cardiopatium Corymbosum

The good people of Nissi Beach are spreading awareness of local and endemic plants by planting out, or more likely, conserving what dune and wasteland habitat is left. As a result there are boards up and tags put in to describe what flora can be seen. So if you've a yen to see the Sea Daffodil or Beach Morning Glory its well worth taking a walk along the wasteland down to Ayia Napa and cutting back when you get to the harbour.

Also take a look around to see the bird life, here a few of the places have Swallow nests, including the bike shop and next door to Pow the Shop. Mostly its sparrows here, so get used to them hopping around, dust bathing and begging for crumbs. Be warned they get quite close.  

Also have a look out for lizards especially the Agama lizard, which is one of the larger European lizards, or the smaller snake eyed lizard.

Snorkelling has it own rewards and you can be sure to spot some Ornate Wrasse as well as mullet and Gilthead. As well as attendant puffer fish, refugees from the Red Sea (and beyond.) Invertebrates include, round the rocks some shrimp, and a mass of snails including the feared Cone Shell as well as less feared mussels and ceriths. We were lucky to see a weed covered crab and on one occasion out on the rocks, an orange nudibranch. (NB is Chromodoris now invalid as a name, everywhere I've seen this, has it as Goniobranchus.)

On land we saw a rose chafer and in our final week quite a few Painted Lady butterfly. All in all quite a nice trip out.

Broken

A brief diversion before the main post.

The Clue of the Broken Blade is going to take a while as both books will need to be typed out. I have a password protected PDF of the original text, that I cannot edit into some semblance of order, so I will have to type both out. Your patience is of course requested as it'll be about 2 months to do this right.

Edit Done in the week, my estimate was right for once. Original, UK Edition.

Incidentally from this lot of 3 I got from Ebay, Broken Sword, Shortwave Mystery and Lost tunnel.

Broken Sword required the most editing, due to aforementioned password protection.

Shortwave Mystery needed the end of a chapter added to the PDF I had so it was complete.

The Secret of The Lost tunnel only required a few words to be added and extensive reformatting and proof reading. For added LOLS, it seems to call Chet, Diet, which is funny. This is along with Prank (Frank) and Poe (Joe) as the most common misprints, due to the OCR reading the text wrong.

Ayia napa

Back home now, and still feel under the weather.  Cyprus is hella nice, but coming back in at 12 midnight is hell. Especially trying to sleep on the plane and being moaned at by some waste of tits, because you're too tall for the seats and you keep knocking the back of her seat.

Anyway we'll do TV this week because its easier and Greek television is piss poor.  First time I've actually had to watch it as last time we didn't have a television until the last day, and all I can remember of that was Mr Magoo and the watchword from the previous hotel that Greek telly sucks.

PIK 1+2 are your main channels. Dull news programmes with bits of Euronews plugged in in Greek. There is a few other bits such as Sigma and Extra which seems to show only old Greek shows from the sixties and that, like a Greek Talking Pictures TV.  Also ANT1 which seems to have Greek wheel of fortune and nothing else memorable.

Russia had the bulk of the channels with T virus returning and a few others that we couldn't get such as whatever Service 65534 was and TV Coran which turned out to be a Muslim Channel.

In fact with Russia Toady Docs, including a Russian Blaire White look alike (a trans bloke called Dmitry) and something which seemed to be nothing but stand up.

My favourite had to be a weird children's sketch show on CTC / STS  called Yeralash which I took to be of Soviet Vintage (apparently was) until I clocked that one of the kids was wearing a Turtles T Shirt. 

I will detail some of the sketches I saw below.

A variation of the old who calls their parrot Jesus joke as two kids break into a house and help themselves to grub (another clue that this is not soviet era.) only to confront the parrot who calls for a dog to chase them out.

Two kids fake a bomb threat at the school, and clear everyone out. Feeling their joke has gone too far they say its a joke but their fake bomb turns out to be a real bomb and they get blown up. The Hardy boys did a variation of this to keep Chief Collig away in the original Tower Treasure.

A kid hides out in a jewellers shop and bothers the owner. Yeah not sure what went on here.

Finally my favourite is one where a kid bothers a pretty teacher. She goes to the park where he turns into a cuckoo.

The last strand is Arabic stuff on MBC. This is kind of like Film 4 but with obscure films subbed into Arabic.  So if you want Need for Speed or The Iron Lady at weird hours or more main stream the Tim Burton Alice films this is your go to place.

MBC 2 seems to show nothing but bastard Friends subbed in Arabic which is hell and MBC 3 is your kids show with what looks like Hodja from street racing as its branding. We saw some of that Yugioh! on bikes and around 3 am. Not the most easiest time to watch something dubbed in arabic you have a passing knowledge of.

Finally there is some bollywood stuff and a few home shopping channels that seem to only have weight loss and a lame looking tip o magic style floor sweeper.

Edit updated with a few infos and photos and added Prime Tel which seems to show nothing but football (mostly La Liga) as well as being a mobile and internet provider.