Is it too sweet? Right now, it hardly seems to matter. “Nothing here comes from outside this valley,” says my new friend with the proud smile of a parent, before dropping off a glass of table wine. Not eating traditional halloumi cheese in Cyprus is proving to be something of an impossibility, so I’m a little relieved when I’m instead presented with a hearty salad and some village sausage. I push on to the rose-scented village of Agros, where I pull up a chair outside Pezema Tavern and ask the waiter for some recommendations. Elsewhere, in Kakopetria, Cypriots like to escape the crushing heat of the coast and spend the evenings in the town square, drinking Keo beer on plastic chairs before shambling home to murder some karaoke late into the night. In recent years, small towns such as Kalopanagiotis have been developed and improved by the arrival of boutique hotels-new life has been breathed into old buildings that were crumbling into oblivion. “Such beauties as it had were in its hidden villages,” wrote Durrell of this region, “tucked into pockets and valleys among the foothills, some rich in apples and vines, some higher up smothered in bracken and pine.” There are dozens of scenic mountain settlements in the island’s interior. As with village life, there seems no point in even attempting to rush consequently, the driving is delightful, and scheduling must be flexible. Tunnels are uncommon and roads tend to loop extravagantly around valleys like lines on a topographical map. Nothing is too far away as the phoenix flies in the Troodos, but there’s rarely a chance to take a direct route. I let the car enjoy meandering downhill, stopping only to buy a bag of dried cherries from a farmer at the roadside. In a year where I’ve found myself mistrusting the very air I breathe, these alpine conditions feel something like a miracle, so I savor a couple of extra lungfuls before heading back down the mountain. I wonder how he was able to move on.Ĭlimbing into the car and thinking about this, I switch off the air-conditioning and roll down the windows, allowing Olympos’ warm, pine-scented breeze to drift in. I wonder what he would have remembered about it. Durrell was born in 1912 and would have been a boy during the 1918 flu outbreak, so he must have known something of the monumental devastation caused by pandemics. But as I reach the end of the path and find my car the only one parked at the trailhead, I realize that we have at least one thing in common. More than 60 years separate our time in Cyprus, and so much has changed that it’s perhaps futile to compare our experiences. Around me, a loose pine forest cloaks the mountainside, countless fallen cones lying at the feet of the trees, a billion pristine needles beside them. Above, benevolent clouds seem to have snagged on the summit, offering a sort of parasol. My journey begins in Limassol, where I make my way to the Artemis Nature Trail, a four-hour hike named after the goddess of the wilderness that offers a satisfying route around Mount Olympos’ peak-the island’s highest mountain at 6,404 feet. Behind them, buildings appear as though they’ve emerged from the mountains rather than been constructed. By the roadside, a stooped woman with knees seemingly older than the hills climbs slowly toward the next village. To look out the car window here is to see life from another era, decades ago, perhaps, or maybe even centuries. While tourism has altered its fringes, the interior of Cyprus suggests a time before cruise ships and resort holidays. While there’s little chance of bumping into any deities, travelers can find the Mediterranean island’s most timeless swaths on a drive through the Troodos Mountains and the sprawling Paphos Forest in the west of the country. New hydrafacial machine.The ancient Greeks held that Cyprus was so beautiful, it was a playground of their gods and the birthplace of the fairest, Aphrodite, the goddess of love.

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