Northern Cyprus Road Trip pt. 2

It’s day two of the Northern Cyprus road trip. First on the day’s agenda, seeing the sights of Guzelyurt (Morphou):

Former palace of the Bishop of Morphou, the museum contains a collection of stuffed animals (reminding me of Kyrgyzstan) and archaeological finds. Altogether unimpressive, except for the sheep…

… with TWO HEADS.

Following the stay in Guzelyurt, we stock up on fruit at the local market and head north. Along the way we see a sign marking an alternate route to one of the churches we want to visit. Thinking it’s no big deal, we decide to take the alternate route, leaving the nice sealed road for a dirt road.

The dirt road is reasonably flat at the start and proceeds to get rockier and less flat. After passing through a small stream and almost rolling backwards down a hill, we come across a group of hunters out with their beagles. They look out of their jeeps and are almost in awe when they see our ‘09 Ford Fiesta with barely 10cm of ground clearance. We honk and carry on, only to reach a dead end, a large ditch in the rocks that will do serious damage to our little rental.

Thinking we should turn back, we sit and wait as one of the hunters drives past us in his jeep, up and over the small roadblock. We make up our mind then and there to fill in the ditch, making a small bridge for the car to cross. So there we spend the next twenty minutes building the bridge, a great family bonding exercise.

The only thing left to do is to get in the car, say a prayer, hold our breaths and gun it over the bridge. The water, mud and rocks don’t do much damage to our little rental so we carry on with the trip and visit Kantara Castle high in the Kyrenia Mountain Range.

Kantara Castle was built by the Byzantines as a lookout post against raiding Arabs. The castle was used with other castles in Cyprus as a network of lookout/defence posts, the others being Kyrenia Castle, St. Hilarion Castle and Buffavento Castle (not visited)

We’re so close to the north-eastern tip of Northern Cyprus so we decide to head that way, aided by our tourist map which says that wild donkeys can be found along the route.

Dasha (sister) and Dad are on donkey scouting duties from their respective windows while I focus on the road. Every few minutes Dad is telling me to slow down, his eyes can’t keep up with my driving and he swears to have seen the bushes shaking, indicating the presence of donkeys.

Our intrepid adventurer, yours truly is the first to spot him, only because the donkey is standing in the middle of the road, eating carrots that another driver is feeding him.

Mr Donkey goes crazy for all the fruit we feed him, and shows his appreciation by standing in front of the car, with orange juice dribbling down his donkey chin. Dasha closes the window and the juice leaves a trail.

Tree in a field, spotted while driving. Stopped the car in the middle of the road to take the shot.

Final stop for the evening, the ancient city of Salamis.

Salamis traces its roots back to the 11th century BC. The legend tells that the city was founded by Teucer, the son of King Telamon - who accompanied Jason as one of his Argonauts in the quest for the Golden Fleece.

Teucer fought alongside his half-brother Ajax in the Trojan war against his cousins Hector and Paris, children of King Priam of Troy who is Teucer’s uncle. Teucer was disowned by his father Telamon following Ajax’s suicide.

The Temple of Zeus in Salamis was built in the time of Teucer, however was improved during the Hellenistic period.