Not for the faint-hearted: a bus trip to the mountains

Juggling late buses, those that don’t show up and those that don’t connect prime tourist attractionsWhen I was talking to people ahead of coming to Cyprus for the summer, one recurring issue I was warned about was the public buses. Buses in Cyprus, I heard, are totally unreliable. They don’t come on time, or they don’t come at all. You can’t trust them to get you to where you need to go. It was with this context in mind that I formed a pleasant impression of public transport. The buses, both intercity ones and those within Nicosia, were generally able to get me where I wanted. I wondered, however, how reliable the bus was for those in less populated areas of the country. I decided to find out during a weekend trip to the Troodos mountains, where I intended to travel mainly by public bus. It was not exactly a success. While making a tentative plan for the weekend, I had only a few concrete goals in mind. I wanted to see Kykkos monastery, make it to the Platres on Sunday and stop by a winery to bring something home for my family. There is only one bus route that goes to Kykkos from Nicosia: Bus 82. It doesn’t run on Sundays, and it passes by just twice in each direction on other days. I had to go on Saturday morning if I wanted to get there because, if I went on the second bus on Saturday, I would have no way of getting back for the rest of the weekend. So it was that I set out from Nicosia shortly after 7am on Saturday morning. I took a packed, standing room only, bus to the Apolloneio hospital in the city before catching Bus 408, headed towards Troodos square. I got off midway through the route at a stop named “Mitropoliti Chrysanthou Sarigianni – Atsas” five minutes before the connecting 8.55am bus to Kykkos was due. The map showed that I would be departing from the same stop that I arrived at, so I waited in the same place. At 8.55am, I checked Google Maps, which indicated that the bus was delayed five minutes, so I wasn’t too worried. Seconds later, two buses pulled out from the bus parking lot behind the nearby petrol station and exited to the left of me. In front was Bus 82. I ran towards it from the bus stop, but it had turned the corner and driven away. I was too late. I wondered in a daze where I had gone wrong. Evidently, I was supposed to board the bus where it was waiting near the parking lot rather than at the bus stop along the road, but I saw no signage to convey that. The next bus to Kykkos was six hours later, at 2.55pm, and a quick check on the Bolt app confirmed to me that no Bolt driver was nearby. Out of options, I walked to the petrol station and asked for help calling a taxi to the Kykkos monastery. The statue of Makarios at Kykkos monastery I spent time at the monastery and made the trek up Throni hill to the tomb of Archbishop Makarios III. After a quick lunch, I set out to find the bus stop and make sure I was in the right place. The bus ride was quiet. Besides the three people who had got on at Kykkos with me, there was only one other person from an earlier stop. No one else got on or off the rest of the ride, and we arrived at Atsas only one minute behind schedule. Seven minutes later, I was on Bus 408 headed towards Troodos Square – the final one of the day. The bus came at 2.43pm, five minutes early, and I wondered what would have happened if the bus from Kykkos was slightly later and the bus to Troodos was slightly earlier. Once I got to Troodos Square, I considered my options. I wanted to go to the wine village of Omodos, but the only way to get there by bus would be to go down to Limassol first before going back up – a three hour long ordeal. I thought about going to the famed Tsiakkas Winery near Pelendri, but after getting to Trimiklini, the bus to Pelendri would not come in time to get to the winery before closing at 5pm. I didn’t have much time before the last bus going south out of Troodos Square for the day – the 64 Bus at 3.30pm – so I got on the bus when it came. I decided to get off at the picturesque village of Lania and, with further bus options so limited, was forced to ask a friend who lives in the mountains to pick me up for the night. I awoke on Sunday morning in a small village in Limassol district, determined to make it to Platres. In the Platres forest With a little waiting, I could take the bus to Omodos pretty easily. But, despite Omodos and Platres being prominent villages that are a 15-minute drive apart, there is no bus that goes between them without requiring you to detour to Limassol first. I didn’t see the point in spending nearly three hours on the bus to get to Platres, so I asked my friend to drive me there. On the way, we stopped in Omodos, where I bought some commandaria and zivania. In Platres, I went for a walk in the Platres forest to the waterfalls nearby. It was refreshing to see a steady stream coming down from the mountains following strong rainfall this year and to get a reprieve from the heat. I wanted to stay longer, but I had to catch the last bus of the day to Limassol at 3.45pm. I got to the bus stop and waited, and waited and waited. No bus came, and I began to lose hope for myself and the two other people waiting there. Suddenly, 20 minutes after the scheduled time, a bus coming from a different direction arrived, and the driver told us she could get us to Limassol. The mysterious bus brought us quickly to Saittas, where a larger bus was waiting to take us the rest of the way. I wasn’t sure what happened to the original bus that was supposed to come, but I had made it successfully to Limassol. I enjoyed a dinner in the city, stumbled across the Wind Orchestra Festival and caught the intercity bus back to Nicosia. Limassol seafront, a place I didn’t expect to see on my bus trip to the mountains I pondered my weekend adventures while on the bus to Nicosia. Even for a region with understandably less demand for buses, having a bus go through a stop only twice a day seemed too infrequent. I wondered whether anybody, except for those with absolutely no other options, would choose to structure their day around those bus times. How many tourists who don’t rent a car might see the hassle that travelling to the Troodos is and decide not to go? And, most of all, I was frustrated by the difficulty of getting between some villages without going to Limassol first. It seemed like adding a short route that connects the Troodos square–Limassol line with Omodos could open up much greater mobility. I’m not the first person to notice these shortcomings. Etap Troodos president Nikos Matthaiou has spoken about how lack of efficient connections from the airports to the Troodos is hindering tourism. Former Transport Minister Alexis Vafeades acknowledged that mountain areas need “not only a better road network but also a better bus service”. Additionally, perhaps the idea of a railroad connecting Cyprus is not an impossible dream. European transport commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas told people last year to “don’t laugh” at the idea of trains in Cyprus. Ultimately, for a country with the lowest use of public transportation in the European Union, there is still much room for improvement, especially in mountainous communities.