DAY 83 – AYIA NAPA AYIA NAPA AYIA NAPA
Arrived in Cyprus early in the morning and convinced Sheltered Dave to take a detour from his journey to Turkey and come to Ayia Napa for a spot of clubbing. The only ferry options leaving Cyprus were either the next day or six days later. Six days was too long so we decided to stay one day and just party right through till the ferry the next afternoon, thus saving on accommodation. Heading out for the day we found out that the first of October is Independence Day in Cyprus, which is the biggest public holiday of the year so nothing was open. Great. One day in town and it’s shut :(
I can tell that Cyprus is a Greek country because the porn in the newsagents is on the bottom shelf.
The island of Cyprus is split in two. There is a Greek Cyprus and a Turkish Cyprus. I was in Greek Cyprus and the people there are completely uncaused by the Turkish ‘occupation’ in the north. The welcome to Cyprus tourist brochure puts it like this ‘in July 1974 turkey invaded Cyprus and since then 37% of the island in the north is being illegally occupied by Turkish troop who acted in violation of all principles governing international relations.’ In one shop I saw a brochure on the checkout headed ‘Holidaying in Turkey?’ It described some atrocities carried out by the Turkish army as recently as 1997. The pictures included mass graves, decapitations and children who have been disfigured by chemical weapons.
We spent day on beach at Lomassol and caught a taxi to Ayia Napa around six. I can honestly say that I have never seen a place so finely tuned to the needs of Brits on package holidays. So much so that they should probably rename the place Little England. The town is filled to the brim with geezers in all their bizarre and funny sounding manifestations (Geordies, Brummies, Scots, Cockneys, Welsh, Irish etc). There seems to be a set uniform for both the guys and girls. They girls as little as possible and what they do wear is skin tight. Heals and a about a kilo of makeup also seems to be compulsory. The guys wear pants (you might know these as trousers or slacks), and neatly pressed (i.e. some geezer brought an iron and the were ironed recently) untucked shirts with polished shoes or sometimes bright white sneakers. Both groups must have started getting ready to go out around lunch time.
Oh yeah and it pumped. If its one thing the Balmy Army Youth know how to do it’s drink hard and party hard.
Monkey was like a kid in a toy store spent the night trying to snog everything in sight. He had some success despite his inability to speak a word of English. He might have had more success if he had focused his efforts. Apparently he hasn’t heard the old adage ‘the man who chases two rabbits goes home hungry.’ or in Monkey’s case ‘the man who chases one hundred rabbits right in front the other rabbits other goes home hungry with a few slaps.’
We went to a few clubs and ended up at a wicked foam rave. The only downer of the night was when I broke my sun glasses sliding through the foam on the dance floor. Days of pushing hard with irregular sleep caused the wheels to come badly off the ‘party till the ferry’ plan and I crashed out on the beach at six when my body completely gave out on me.
