To the Karpaz Peninsula

Kantara Castle

Today we move on to Dipkarpaz Peninsula, which is the north-east tip of the island.  Google Maps suggests that it would be a 30 min side-trip to add-on the Kantara Castle but we already knew that they’re too optimistic with travel times on the windy mountain roads.

We had taken things easy this morning and departed from Girne after 1000.  The drive took us through many holiday homes, some of which were gorgeous.  There were some that had been started and abandoned though.  You’d certainly want to do some research before putting any money into a holiday home that’s purchased from the plans.

Including a break to make some phone calls, we got to Kantara Castle around midday.  It was a dumb time to arrive and climb up to the castle.  The ticket desk appeared closed so we saved ourselves TRY100 (NZD6) though.

I suggested to Kim that we could just take a look from the outside/below like we did last night.  But this castle is by far more accessible than the two previous ones, as we were nearly at the castle gate and it didn’t go up that many levels.

The castle offered a great 360 degree view of the island as far as the visibility would allow.  We saw part of the Karpaz peninsula where we were headed today and the Famagusta area which was tomorrow’s destination.

Back down on the coast around 1315, we backtracked slightly to eat at Kaplica by the sea.

Continuing on the road to the Karpaz peninsula, I as surprised the roads were better than I had expected.  They were smooth with a lane in each direction, with a few potholes here and there.

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Tip of Karpaz Peninsula

Arriving at the Karpaz Sunset Hotel at 1445, there was no one there.  The rooms appeared all set up for guests.  Fortunately, I was able to ring them on Whatsapp and we were in our rooms shortly after.

After a short rest, we departed at 1515 to drive to Apostolo Andreas Monastery near the north-western tip of Cyprus before backtracking to possibly the best beach, Golden Beach.

As we headed away from the town, there were donkeys on the road.  People buy bread and vegetables to feed them as they go through, giving these cuties plenty of inducement to stay on the roads.

Because the Apostolo Andreas Monastery didn’t look very striking, we overshot and ended up at a stunning bay and beach shown as Zafer Burnu Beach on Google Maps.  The 30 min drive indicated by Google Maps was more like 45 mins.

This beach was stunning as nearly as good as Furuzamami Beach in Okinawa that we visited earlier this trip.  Here, we had a very nice swim in the highly-buoyant and salty water of the Mediterranean.

As there was no shade anywhere that we could utilise without paying, we moved on and backtracked to the monastery.  Despite being of high significance to Greek Cypriots, it wasn’t big or stunning.

We continued backtracking towards Golden Beach.  Making a stop at an ice-cream truck, we caught an excellent view of Golden Beach.  It was a long and broad span of golden-brown sand with bluish water, but it couldn’t compare with where we had just been.

Perhaps it was the direction of the sun that didn’t render the water in the best possible light.  It didn’t look that blue, deep or highly swimmable.  And with no shade for Kim who burns easily (despite SPF50 sunblock), he decided that we would be better off at another place (Halk Beach) that had trees under which he could hide while I took a longer swim than him.

We returned from our outing around 1730 and headed out an hour later for a simple meal of lahmacun and pide.  We weren’t hungry but had to eat in case options become limited later in the evening.