Five Finger mountain
Just outside the town of Kyrenia is rather spectacular mountain range, called the “Five Finger Mountains” after the mountain pictured above, which from some angles looks remarkably like a palm and upraised fingers. I’m sure I can count more than five finger-like outcrops though! The range shelters a number of small abandoned Greek Orthodox churches (several of which we were taken to see – after a while one church looks very like another!) and three crusader castles. We went on a hot and steep walk up to the most inaccessible of the three – Buffavento Castle. That’s it in the picture below, just visible on the very top of the mountain.
Buffavento Castle perched on a rocky crag.
I remembered half-way up the hair-pin drive to the car-park that I’d been there before with Christopher. Except that the top of the mountain had been shrouded in cloud that day, which made the very steep and rocky path up to the castle very difficult and dangerous, and by the time we reached the top the fog was so thick that we could barely see a hand in front of our face! This time the skies were so clear that the views were spectacular, and well worth the long hard climb.
The view from the castle
When we staggered back down to the coach, after nearly two hours climbing up and down the mountain, our guide poured us each an extremely welcome Brandy Sour, the local cocktail. I think by then she’d realised that there were already rumblings at the back of the mini-bus about the itinerary, as the measures she poured us were very generous indeed!
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It’s a wonderful place – a few of my pics are at https://www.flickr.com/search/?w=73443510@N00&q=buffavento
We went very early to avoid the heat; as we got back down we met a somewhat unprepared British couple and had to advise them that not only would it be a long hot climb, but that there was not a gift shop, cafe, or indeed any other human presence on the mountain, and that starting off without any water wasn’t such a great idea…
No gift-shop, no cafe, no toilets even. Our guide’s advice to those caught short was to “use your discretion in the landscape…..” – I’ve not heard it called that before! Even in late December it was a hot climb, so it must be very punishing in the summer. Certainly, a bottle of water is needed. And the promise of Brandy Sours waiting at the bottom helped too!