Larnaca Travel Forum

Hello everybody!

Me and my boyfriend are traveling to Larnaca for 10th March to 16th March. We would like to know if there are some interesting hiking routes leaving directly from Larnaca or the near areas? - one day trips of example.

Also we would enjoy probably more demanding routes in the mountain areas...but as we won't have a car or do not want to rent one, how is the public transportation? can we get by bus to a good town/village close to the hiking areas in the trodos? and which places would be nice and interesting to see?

Looking forward to hearing your recommendations,

Inka and Robert

Public transport in Cyprus is very bad.
There are buses running to some of the villages, but they are quite infrequent and unreliable. Often they only have one round trip (into town in the morning, back to the village in the evening). Shared taxis only run between the main cities.
Near Larnaca, there unfortunately aren't too many interesting areas to hike in. If you can get to Limassol by taxi, you could do a hike on the Akrotiri penninsula. Or take a taxi to Lefkara and start from there into the hills. Otherwise you'd need a car to get you into the Troodos mountains.

Landscapes of Cyprus (Sunflower Landscapes) (Paperback)
by Geoff Daniel (Author), John Oldfield (Editor), Christine Oldfield (Editor)

This book may be out of print, and it is only in English but it has both walking tours and tours by car throughout Cyprus.

If you can get hold of a copy (Amazon?) it might be a useful guide for your trip. We enjoyed our stay in the North very much.

Thank you two for these informations!

I can't believe my luck that our nearest library has that particular book about Cyprus. Great! =) I hope it will help us to sort out some things!
Thank you for the tip!

I would still be very excited to hear which areas or hiking routes have you people tried and would like to recommend?

Since Cyprus is now part of the E4, there is a trail leaving from Larnaca Airport going to Rizoelia which the CTO site says is 12 kilometres.

Public transportation is not very good as george5b has mentioned. Getting out of Larnaca, you will need the Intercity buses: http://www.intercitybuses.com

I gather that the fastest way to get to the mountains is via Limassol. There is one bus that leaves for Platres and Troodos - around 9am on weekdays only. There is also a bus from Nicosia but it leaves quite a bit earlier (7:30am comes to mind) and takes longer as it is more of a village bus.

You may also be interested in this past forum discussion:
http://forum.virtualtourist.com/discussion-231289-1-1-Travel-0-417-Cyprus-discussion.html

The CTO website (visitcyprus.org.cy) is difficult to navigate but does have all of the nature trails on there - sadly, no intuitive, easy maps though, but I am sure you could request the brochure of Nature Trails be sent your way.

I've done the shorter trails around Troodos which are really nice and have great views. Have yet to find the trail around Lefkara despite looking for it a couple of times. Sometimes the nature trails are really well marked and other times...well, let's say one has to take one's best guess.

Maybe my answer will be useful to other people.

You get loads of walking routes info on www.natureofcyprus.org .

Enjoy