Days of early starts and pre-sunset desperate gasps of air have piled up. A new job meant a massive improvement in my own quality of life, yet no pause button was hit when switching from the long commutes across the nightmarish M50 and breakfasts full of laughter with my now ex-colleagues, to the short commute down the road at the foot of the Dublin Mountains. Being the new guy always offers an entire array of possibilities, experiences and new friendships. An introduction to peers that skim through the clouds of strangeness and within days, transform into key pieces of your new life.

I found a safe haven in Lisbon the second weekend of January, where I stress on returning every year as a tradition. Good food, good friends, and a sense of mystery behind every elaborated tiled wall. An easy flight for a Saturday morning and the place I long to perhaps move to and grow old in, the North Atlantic breaking across the coast at Cascais gently freezing the passing hours at the perfect synch of waves and ageing heartbeats.

The past months have been eventful in a personal level, having re-taken on the pleasurable challenge of the swimming pools and, with the fastest heart hate across the lanes, start my days at five in the morning, when the stress of the city is nowhere yet to be seen and the cold winds prevail across the coast at Sandycove.
The winter castigated Ireland for longer this year, turning the early morning starts into an excruciating ordeal only overcome with a pre-drive espresso, at times such journey becoming hazardous with the unpredictable snowfalls, yet, this seems not to matter when results are seen, when a race is up and the body reacts accordingly. It is like round two for my body, and a shower of dejavus for my mind.

I feel that an introduction to the first months of the year as above is necessary. A brief explanation of my absence from the travel field with the swimming and the new job taking over my life entirely, time equally needed to reflect on the epic journey taken last year and most importantly, the planning for the next stage in life, involving perhaps less travel and a place I can entirely call home.
As I flick through the newspapers’ property section while sipping on a cup of overpriced coffee and my tired arms stretch across the wooden table after a morning of punishing pull sets, I decide on a few life tweaks to make the journey towards the next big goal more enjoyable. A way of keeping my eyes on the prize but at the same time enjoy the process. Think of having the cake and eat it at the same time, but with properties and travel.
Think sunshine, think rest, think unplugging. The calendar prohibits travels in April with racing and qualifiers for Nationals scheduled for every weekend and Skyscanner vomits search results across my desk within seconds: Malaga, Barcelona, Milan, Rome, Paphos.

–‘Paphos? Is that in Greece?’ I mutter, while hitting the Google search button.
-‘Cyprus! Country 101?’
-‘Confirm Purchase and, we’re off’.

Different to previous travels, the confirmation email stays at the back of my correspondence and my mind barely has time to process or further plan. Three weeks of a mix of perfectly sunny and miserably rainy days in the Irish capital go by,  anxiety over swim results build up at the frustration of fatigue taking over the body of a fully-grown adult racing teenagers. Excitement over the long awaited results is next, prompting a modest celebration before finally letting the mind wander and relax, or so I think.

The long-awaited relax trip to Paphos starts with a challenging traffic jam, with Ed Sheeran performing in the city and traffic around the venue turning into a pandemonium of Friday afternoon chaos. I cold sweat in the bus and suddenly feel sick in my stomach. I desperately get off the bus and with a pale face, I turn to the facilities of a nearby pub only to later discover that no taxis are free. I curse Dublin’s urban planning while I feel a blister building up around my toe, hurting my every step as I clean the sweat off my forehead. I finally catch a taxi and the driver, afraid of disappointing me,  takes every possible shortcut and bus lane available.
At the airport, I run across security and look up to the departure screens. The flight is delayed and for the first time in my life, I am happy at Ryanair’s on-time performance. Once on board, a drunk Polish man promises an eventful ride, though as the plane taxies, he instantly falls asleep. We are number eleven on the departure queue, leaving the runway an hour and a half behind schedule.

The five-hour flight heads East over England, the night catching up with us over the German/Polish border. Sitting on my left hand side across the aisle, an Irish woman, afraid the drunk Polish man get us diverted with some drama, rapidly takes interest on my travels, at times comparing notes from places previously visited by both. Next to me, a young Polish man eagerly exudes enthusiasm and at times, brings memories of my old self, badly trying to befriend the flight attendant deadheading back to her hometown and now gently leaning her head asleep against the window. Past midnight, we descend over the Greek coast and, in the middle of the late night – or early morning-, at a time in which the air around us grows quiet and fresh in the Levant, we are cleared to land just off the Western shores of Cyprus.
Once we queue at the airport security, the three of us clumsily take each other’s contact details and just as most travel empty promises, aim for a get-together soon enough.

I reach my hotel shortly before two in the morning and the receptionist, an old Cypriot man halfway through his tired shift, welcomes me into the hotel with a smirk as melancholic as the venue itself. Tripadvisor reviews for my accommodation were mixed, ranging from ‘value for money’ to ‘poor and dated’.
Placed next to the beach and with an unbeatable price, it looked like the perfect fit.

I am assigned an apartment the same size as the one I rent in Dublin. The walls around the bathroom corners have crumbled to the passing of time and the old furniture, covered in peach upholstery nostalgically reflect the colours of a time before the country gained independence from Britain. Cozy, the noisy air conditioning lulls me good night after devouring a late-night kebab in the nearby fast food joint.

Despite the hiccups of the inbound trip, I find the badly-sought rest in the early morning. the sun shines across the balcony and plays with the shades of the heavy orange curtains inviting to curiosity. With no alarm set, I proceed on sleeping until my body finds it pertinent, a perfect time for a lush al fresco breakfast.
At the very style of a package holiday -that isn’t-, I laze around the small yet spotless pool area and indulge in the blurry lines of a book,  the large bottle of cold water quenching the rising temperatures of the Mediterranean and the bag of colourful gummy bears keeping my sugar levels at pace. The sun delightfully burns my skin in a way not experienced in months and the sea, softly crashing against the beach in the background, changes its tones of turquoise at every passing minute.

A refreshing breeze blows from the South bringing memories of nearby Alexandria some hundreds miles South, and sends shivers of pure indulgence through my spine, now in supine position for hours. I receive a text from Caroline and, after the sweetest of the naps sheltered under palm trees, I decide to break my self-imposed cloister with fish-and-cocktails dinner plans.
I find a strange delight in visiting seasonal towns when the lights have not yet been turned on, the opportunity of observing the local life -or lack of in this case- given across streets lined with empty bars, the neon signs sadly awaiting for the summer months to once again shine and the wooden chairs piled up in clusters of dusty rubble tied together with precarious plastic chains soon to be laid in square patterns to receive patrons.

Paphos does not have the party life of Ayia Napa, nor the size of Limassol or solemnity of Nicosia. The town self-praises its modesty, a place of still movements that most people either hate or love. I go for the second choice.
The sea breeze seems to rejuvenate the sheer terrain surrounding the cliff walk to the hotel and the moon, finding no objection from the clear night, reflects on the sea like a mesmerising silver platter extending to the horizon.

I repeat the morning sequence of breakfast and swimming pool, this time receiving a text from Milosz, my new friend from the plane. Forty minutes later, he appears on a small rented car along with his friend from Ireland also vacationing in the island.

-‘ So where do you guys want to go?’, I cluelessly ask.
-‘I have no idea, we have the car’.

With no plan, we follow the coast East and, through a series of bends and motorway crossings, we reach Aphrodite’s Rock, where the limestone pale white rock walls have partially collapsed over the pristine sea like droplets of white cotton embedded in a perfectly blue weave. While swimming offshore, I can see the coral reefs gradually sinking down to the depths of the Mediterranean, the small fish playfully splashing in between their colourful shapes in full clarity. The wind, at this time freshly blowing across the coast, creates small ripples of water that wash ashore perfectly rounded pebbles in an assortment of colours only nature can provide.

When hunger strikes, we drive North and return to Paphos, ditching a visit to the rather disappointing castle and parking the car at Lighthouse Beach, where the sun has found its resting place after yet another day of summer bliss. We climb over a rusty fence and end up in an archeological site, where mosaics crafted in the Greek Empire are being preserved under a wooden dome-like structure, and where the last tourists of the day walk across passageways smothered in the afternoon humid heat.

 

And with dinner at the same harbour-side restaurant and the taste of grilled sea bass and one too many frozen Margaritas, I retreat to my solitary confinement in Pachyammos, in the early night desperately trying to regain some of its glitter at the sound of bad karaoke, English football matches repeats and cheap sweet cocktails.

The next and last morning in Cyprus is no differently lazy. Slowly moving towards departure preparations, after lunch my flight lifting off the hot runway in Paphos and sharply turning right over the lush Akamas Peninsula, spearheading towards the cold air of Northern Europe. A five-hour flight of slow paced reflection and most importantly, on recharging batteries for what comes next. Time to plan my summer.