Into the mountains we go from Nicosia. Which means going up and up from a cold and rainy place….so it gets even colder but at least not rainier….yet. The views are quite good on the way and the traffic becomes much more free flowing compared to Nicosia which is nice. We have one stop planned on the way, at a Unesco World Heritage site in Palaichori on the way. We are happy that it is well advertised from the main road and that we are able to find parking nearby and after enjoying the great views it is time to visit the site.
As you would expect the Unesco protected site is an old frescoed church from the middle of the second millenium. In fact there are multiple protected churches here and the next day we plan to visit a few more, today we have time and energy only for one.
Unfortunately the church itself is closed so we cannot see the frescoes. We can only walk around it to understand the architecture. It is a bit different from the usual churches as it seems almost buried to be less conspicuous while usually they stand tall and advertise to everyone that they are here.
Given that we cannot enter the visit is short and soon we are again on the road climbing towards our AirBnB which is relatively close to the top of the mountains. The empty road has some great views and we also notice some unknown bird flying over but there is never a good place to park to look for them.
We arrive at the AirBnB and after a brief confusion related to which door we should use to enter we are inside. However we then notice the unknown bird outside so out we go and this time we catch it with both binoculars and photo, it is a Cyprus Wheatear, an Cyprus endemic and a life bird for us.
We spend the rest of the evening warming up after we understand how to start the heating and just relaxing inside the cozy AirBnB. The only moment of alarm is when someone is knocking on our door, we find out that it is our downstairs neighbors, also tourists from Israel, who don’t have electricity. We call our host and he helps them also and after all this excitement and the cold and rain we endured during the day we are tired and go to sleep.
