Welcome to Cyprus

 Welcome to my newest blog where I keep you (and myself) up to date with my latest travel experience. It is the 3rd of March 2025 and I have just arrived in the village of Pano Lefkara, Cyprus. My reason for being here is to volunteer on an archaeology project in the mountainous countryside of Cyprus. The project is run by Martin Clark, he is the director of GRAMPUS Heritage, an organisation that does placements for young people who want to travel, learn and practice new skills in a real world sense. I completed 3 weeks in Romania during the summer of 2025, Martin lives in Cyprus and has got together a group of young archaeologists to help him with his current project. This will last 5 weeks and I'll be leaving on the 4th of April. 

I arrived in Paphos at around 2pm local time and was picked up by Eden, a member of the team helping Martin to supervise the project. We drove along the coast and stopped at Aphrodite's rock to have a look. It is a sea stack of three large rocks on the coast and the myth is that if you swim around the rock three times you will find true love. It is situated along a spectacular coastline of huge cliff faces. We continued our journey to Larnaca airport where we would pick up the other archaeologists. On the way Eden chatted to me about the country and some background about places and culture. We picked up the other archaeologists and made our way to our house in Pano Lefkara. It took about 40 mins from Larnaca airport and we gained 600m in altitude. 

We met Martin for a chat and then got settled into our rooms in the house before going out for a quick explore of the village. It is situated on the Greek side of the island up on a hillside and is one of the most picturesque places I have ever been. If you like cobbled streets, colourful buildings and great views this is the place to be. We had dinner and ended the day as we were all quite tired. 

4th of March

Today we got up and had our orientation for our project. We started by going to Martin's workshop, which is like an eccentric collectors den, it's brilliant. Everything from archaeological artifacts, to a tractor seat collection and vintage clothes shop. He took us to the Islamic cemetery that has been partly destroyed and broken, which we will be helping to restore later on in the project and then set us off the main part of the project for now. It is applied archaeology for bringing tourism to the area, we are making an online trail of religious sites and features that people who come to visit can follow and learn about the culture. At the same time I will be learning more about the culture. They are Greek Orthodox so most of the sites are churches and chapels. Today, we went around the village and began to find and mark these sites, including depictions of 'green men', dragons and any apotropaic marks. 'Green men' are often religious images of men with foliage around the face, often being the hair and facial hair, that link humans and people with nature. Apotropaic marks are symbols used to ward off evil, often on doorways and entrances. 

Later in the day a group of German chefs arrived who are completing a 2 week cookery placement, so the house is feeling a lot busier. We all went for a meal at Martin's house which was delicious, we then went back and went to bed.

5th of March

We went to visit the silversmith's down the road to see them smelting in action, Martin knows the men who run it so they let us come and watch them. It was really interesting and we got to buy some jewellery. After we continued searching, marking and photographing religious sites in Pano Lefkara. In the afternoon we drove to Kato Drys, a nearby village, to do the same thing there, as we want to extend our trail beyond just the village. Martin then took us and the German group to a winery on the outskirts of Kato Drys where we looked at their process for making the wine and saw the wine cellar. As the owner knows Martin well, she gave us all a free wine tasting experience, we tried three whites, three reds and a dessert wine. This was all the action for the day so we went back and had a nice evening as a large group. Some of us went out in the evening but nowhere was open.

6th of March

Today we went down into the neighbouring village below Pano Lefkara, called Kato Lefkara. In Greek 'pano' means 'upper' and 'kato' means 'lower'. We completed a walk of the village, continuing our search for religious sites and expanding our trail. We also found three old water cisterns, a Venetian one from medieval times, one originally Roman but has been restored, and one from the British rule in the 1950s. We are marking these water cisterns and tanks because later in the placement we will be creating a similar trail but with water cisterns, as many in the area are still there and some still in use. We will mark each one and add the location to a trail with information about when they were made and by who, etc. 

7th of March

In the morning we drove into the countryside to a sheep and goat farm where we got to play with baby goats! We then got to see the traditional way of making cheese, they mostly make halloumi and anari, we then got to try some. This is an big part of their culture as they eat it in Cyprus almost every day. 

In the afternoon we travelled to Choirokoitia, a Neolithic settlement dating back to the second half of the 7th millennium B.C. It was a large village located on the slopes of a hill partly enclosed by the meander of the Maroni river.