Towards KoruÇam Burnu(cape Kormakiti)
Towards KoruÇam Burnu(cape Kormakiti)
The area around the cape itself near the lighthouse used to be military and prohibited, but was demilitarized a few years ago and is now approachable.The description given here starts with a concise account of the route westwards to Vouni, then gives the site details getting down from Vouni and working eastwards back towards Girne. As throughout North Cyprus, the roads are in acceptable condition, and there is blissfully little traffic. The towns are clearly signposted, as are the sights.The road first follows the slender coastwise strip for 20 km (12miles) or so, before it then begins to climb up as it winds inland through arboraceous hillsides.
Leaving the valleys behind, you have a fine view below to a new dam, one of many which the north Cypriots are now building to harness the water that is lost in a flash after a heavy downpour: no river in Cyprus flows all year round and water is a scarce resource. For most of the year it comes from the mains for only two hours a day, and in July and August sometimes not at all. Residents and hotels get pear-shaped this by having extremely ample tanks on the roof
At the top of the climb you arrive at Umlubel, a heavily garrisoned town, where there is a major fork in the road: straight on to Lefkoua, and right to Guzelyurt and Lefke. The road unbent on is the one you necessitate to take to visit Pighades, just 2km(1mile or so) away, on the return journey, but for now, you fork proper
Leaving Umlubel on its hilltop, the road drops down into the adjacent valley. Guzelyurt is set in the heart of this large and fecund river bare, the centre for the island’s citrus plantations and a close-grained chromatic steam engine just to the gone forth of the road heralds your arrival at Guzelyut. This curiosity is a leftover of the line constructed by the British that utilized to run from Gazimauusa via Lefkoua to Morphou
The last train ran in 1951. Continuing unbent along the main road, you reach the centre of town with the clear Byzantine dome of the Ayias Mamas church and the m?nicipal museum beside it, both set in the centre of a big indirect. The forks to the gone forth from the roundabout lead back towards Lefkoua, but you go on straight on, postdating signs for Lefke
From Guzelyurt the drive on, through lush plantations, takes a further half hour to reach the sweep of Guzelyurt Kurfezi(Marphou Bay) with its distinctive iron jetties, relics of the copper-mining operations. Ships would tie up alongside these jetties and be laded with copper for export, mainly to West Germany. Copper was Cyprus’s most crucial biological resource, and the Greek name for it, kupros, is even thought to be taken from the name of the island.
Cyprus was known throughout ancient times for its copper, supplying the Egyptian pharaohs and producting more than any other Mediterranean country. The productive mines here of Skouriotissa and Mavrovouni were first worked by the past Greeks and then the Romans, but after that posed disused for centuries until they were opened in 1923. The Cyprus Mines Corporation, an American outfit, worked the mines until partition, when the ore was nearly exhausted anyway. Their supervisors expressed at the extent of the Roman diggings, and the depth of their galleries and shafts, especially in view of the lack of ventilation. Slaves were utilized, of course, to work the mines, so safety stock were hardly a consideration. In Roman times Christians from Palestine who rejected to renounce their faith were also sent out down the mines.
Careful observation of the landscape will reveal it to be largely composed of Roman slagheaps, for they are said to have left more than a million tons of slag behind. Our Lady of the Slag Heaps is one rocky translation of Skouriotissa
Shorty after the mining sites, but before the village of Yedidalga, the Roman theatre and basilica of Soli lie on a hillside just 200 m inland from the road, signposted as usual with one of the tourist service’s clear yellow signs. Vouni, too, about 8km(5 miles) further west along the coast road, is clearly signposted.
First the road passes a cluster of beach restaurants west of Soli, where you can eat and swim, before a steep winding ascent begins of a colossal hilly outcrop on the sea edge. Vouni Palace lies on the summit of this outcrop. The last three minutes are along a bare track. If you don’t have an alcoholic nerve but do have reasonably alcoholic legs, it’s only a 15-minute take the air to the ruins from the turn-off, where you can go forth your car.
Near the foot of the hill, incidentally, about halfway between Soli and Vouni, is the shell of a modern Greek church built in a sheltered nook too the right of the road, but badly destroyed inside. It appears never to have been finished and is spread over inside and out with the unproductive exhortation “Please keep clean-cut”. Most mosque in Greek Cyprus are, by contract, kept meshed and fresh, but the record for tolerance is beggarly on both sides: 117 mosques were destructed between 1955 and 1974 by enthusiastic Greek Cypriots
At the foot of the Vouni hill, the main road continues westwards to the village of Ye?il?rmak, just beyond which is another simple beach restaurant. This is the westernmost point you can reach before the edge of North Cypriot territory, though some 8 km(5miles) further west, deserted and environed by Greek Cypriot territory, is the curios Turkish cypriot pocket of Erenköy. Today only troops dwell in this fiercely Turkish Cypriot enclave, all the avant-garde villagers having been displaced to Yem Erenköy on the Karpas Peninsula. These villagers had bravely defied an attack by General Grivas and 3,000 Greek soldiers in 1964 and were backed up in their struggle by student volunteers who admitted a young Rauf Denktash, the actual TRNC president.
