Snorkelling in Cyprus
Prior to coming to Cyprus, I had bought a GoPro Hero3 camera for a bicycle trip to Paris, and Andreas had made it a requirement of his hospitality that I bring it for snorkelling.
We sat and swam in the sun for a few hours before kitting up and heading out with our faces under water. The first time I went snorkelling, off the coast of Western Australia at Ningaloo reef, the mask leaked and I found the magnification from the lenses disconcerting. The second time, at Ko Phi Phi six years later, the mask leaked and I had trouble using the snorkel properly. With a bad start to the world of the under water, I was not expecting great results this time either.
The mask didn’t leak though, and I figured out how to use the snorkel properly and even got used to using flippers. An hour and a half later and I was hooked on this new realm beneath the wet. The weightlessness took away all care. I relished the calm of being submerged and not having to worry about coming up for a breath. It was like taking a long cool bath after a hot day, but with fish and coral surrounding you. As I became accustomed to the new ideas, I began to feel more and more like a dolphin. I wanted to swim as they did, a flick of the tail and like a dart through water, graceful as a ballet dancer, quick as a cheetah, nimble as a mongoose.
I looked more like a robotic mannequin flailing loose underwater. But I didn’t care… The reef at Makronissos follows a promontory of rock as it rips away from the main beaches on either side. The waves have carved away a small over-hang lining this protrusion. Below the water, the rock remains, leaving a platform submerged by a foot of water. This small ledge teems with sea plants and small clumps of coral. Silver sardines and red-green blotched fish shy away amongst the thin underwater flora. The shelf varied between one and two metres wide, dropping away to a sandy bed two and a half metres below. It parts, it forms another overhang underwater, in others, the rock has broken away, leaving chasms and channels between split boulders, filled with plants and scattered with more shy fish.
Large rocks and stones poked through the sand floor, providing haven for urchins and starfish. We passed a small bed of blue green and white speckled seaweed. Its long thin strands flowed with the current like long grass buffeted by strong winds. As the gentle swell rolled over us, so the seaweed swayed back and forth, as if breathing in synchronisation.
Andreas dove down to it, brushing past as if swooping over a field of wheat. Oh how I wished to do the same. I hadn’t yet tried diving down with the snorkel, fearful of the second stage: surfacing and ejecting the water to breathe again. Despite such desire to try, I was more than happy bobbing around on the surface and remained there to do my watching and searching of the blue.
I was called over by Andreas where he and another friend—conveniently also named Andreas—were huddled close above the shelf. I approached and saw a tiny red circular crab on t’other Andreas’ hand. It scuttled sideways and around his hand as he turned it palm down. They called it a mini-hamburger-crab, and with its bun shape and layers of upper shell, middle body and lower shell, it was easy to see where the nickname came from.
The GoPro ran out of battery, so I swam back to the beach, planning on replacing the battery and returning. Pulling off the flippers as, as would be expected, easy, but as I removed the mask my nose and eyebrows were assaulted by a sharp pain that quickly subsided into a dull ache.
‘You’re not used to it yet,’ Andreas later told me. I was only thinking no wonder it didn’t leak if the damn thing was pushing my face of shape. My jaw ached too, from being trapped around the snorkel for a good hour and a half, but I daren’t say it wasn’t worth it.
By the time I was ready and heading back for the water, the Andreas’s were surfacing. One was holding the mini-hamburger, the other a hamburger-crab the size of a hamburger.
‘We found his dad!’ He was pinching and clawing at the air, angry and helpless. Both were a rich terracotta colour out of water.
The next day and we headed for more snorkelling. This time we journeyed to Nissi beach, a tourist hot spot with a built-up beachfront of bars, cafes, hotels and an all-day beach party club. The beach overflowed with umbrellas and deck chairs, mostly empty of people, just waiting for tourists to come along and hire them for a few hours. Cigarette butts plagued the sand and pasty-white beach newbies sprawled ugly on sandy beach towels. Seventy metres off the beach, a small island rises from the shallows. A walkway of ankle-deep water leads towards the island and George told me that not ten years ago, the spit had been dry. Erosion of the waves had worn it down and connected the two small bays. A stream of beachgoers splashed along the spit, heading up onto the island’s summit some six metres high. Over the crest, George said, a sharp cliff face leads into deeper sea, perfect for a high jump.
Andreas and I set off in the shallows and I practiced a full submerge, testing the surfacing and finding it easier than I had imagined. We were about to head into deeper water when a German came up to us. ‘Excuse me, are you good with snorkelling?’ We hesitated a yes, unsure where it was going, and he began explaining about a dropped camera of a friend over somewhere and could we help. After a confused back and forth, we realised what he meant and agreed to head around to the cliff-dive point to search for the camera. As the sea deepened and we emerged from the safety of the little shallow cove, the swell picked up. We skirted the rocks and coral, heading around the island at a good pace but still stopping every now and then to investigate a pile of rocks or a jagged coral wall.
Closer to the rocks and outcrop rising from the water, the waves broke around me, and several times I found myself spluttering with a mouthful of sea water. My heart rate increased from the panic and my breath attempted to quicken but the snorkel restricted it. More spluttering and floundering in the water. I was determined not to let it deter me and I continued to attempt slow, calm breaths. I went back to searching the rocks and ran into more trouble. The waves were not only splashing into my snorkel, but also pushing me into sharp coral and jagged rock. I reached out for something to hold, to anchor myself, to stop running aground. Grabbing rocks or coral under water is a bad idea without gloves, especially when in a panic. I was lucky to escape with a few scratches on my thumb and palm.
We continued around the island, me spending half the time treading water with my head above water. When I did try looking under again, I spotter a moray eel far below writhing across the rock of the sea floor. I tried to point him out to Andreas, but he was gone, slipped away between rocks or into a hole.
The cliff jump dropped into deep water, a pile of boulders below, some covered in soft plants and seaweed. Andreas quickly spotted the sunken GoPro and handed it back to a man treading water. He had been waiting some time for us to round, with all my water swallowing holding us up. I rested a while on a rock, watching thrill seekers hurtle down into the water. Recuperated and breathing normally again, I ventured out. Further away from the island, the swell came in a slow rhythm and I was able to avoid too many more mouthfuls of seawater.
Our next snorkelling trip took us to a small beach nestled at the foot of a hill that hugged around it in a crescent. Again, we set off into the water, this time accompanied by George and his friend. The beach had a crop of rock tumbling out into deeper waters, with the crests of the larger boulders showing above water and the chasms and nooks under water providing home for hundreds of fish. The water was calmer, too, so I spent my time practicing a dive and dolphin swim. Sometimes there was nothing but mossy rock and plain coral to see at the bottom but I dove anyway, enjoying pretending to be a fish.
A few metres out from the rocks and coral, I swam through a small shoal of slim blue fish, trying to dart with them as they battled curiosity and fear. Larger fish kept their distance, sticking in loose packs of around ten and seeming to float with the swell.
There was another patch of seaweed, blooming like a giant pompom on the seafloor. I dropped down to it, brushing my hands through the soft fingers of seaweed, like brushing through tall wheat in a golden field.
Rocks piled underwater and a soft fur of sea moss grew on all of them. Farther out from the shore, the rocks dwindled, but two posts stuck through, piercing the surface and ballooning above the water like stone mushrooms. Eaten away by salt and waves, the rim had turned jagged, like teeth rotten by scurvy. Beneath the water, such harshness in the columns was shrouded in the soft fur of sea moss and tiny corals sprouting from cracks and divots in the rock. Far from being a torturous terrain, it was a gentle green paradise. Slim fish hid between corals or huddled at the base of these stacks, drifting with the current and observing the world with a beady eye from their safe caves.
Andreas called me over to a deeper area where the rock bottom was pitted with hundreds of pockets and holes. He floated at the surface, gaze locked on the rock. I looked down too, unable to see what he saw. He dove down, grabbing a hold with one hand and poking his knife into one of the holes with the other. He jostled the knife around for a moment before coming up for air.
A tail, or leg, flicked out and whisked back in. Andreas still had a keen eye on the hole, biding his time and breathing deep for the next dive.
Down again, trying to goad the creature out of its hole, provoking it into retaliation, leading it out into the open to be grabbed. In a cloud of black soot-like ink and a tug from Andreas, he was swimming to the surface, hand clasped around a small, writhing octopus.
Its tentacles twisted and gripped his hand, trying to squeeze itself out of his grip, squirting ink in distress. We placed him in the yellow net and, as far as I was aware, began heading back to shore to show off our catch and take pictures of the octopus.
On the way back through the columns and boulders and coral, Andreas dove down again, taking the GoPro and pausing a moment above a thin crack in the rock before plunging a hand down. Another cloud of black ink spurted out of the crevasse like thick black smoke, accompanied by tufts of sand disturbed by the commotion. Andreas came to the surface grasping another octopus. It had barely been five minutes between them, a rare occurrence for Andreas and something that never happened for me, not once in my three-day’s experience so far.
He was larger, wrapping himself around Andreas’ hand with ease and stretching his tentacles part-way up his arm. With resistance, Andreas managed to peel him away and place him in the net with the first one.
We swam back on the far side of the tumble of rocks, arriving at a small beach beyond. We handled the octopuses for a while, with some curious beachgoers coming up for photos or just to look at our catch. Satiated, we swam back out to the rocks to release the octopuses again. The little guy, surrounded by perceived threat, shot back into the net, seeming to want to remain caught. A second try, leaving a way out for him, and he darted off, tucking his tentacles behind him like a torpedo and shooting straight for the rocks below.
Andreas and I followed him down at a distance. He noticed us, and as he hit the rock bottom, he splayed out his tentacles and body, transforming from torpedo to spiked dish and morphing from the soft brown of before to a harsh black and white, his eye framed in a ring of deep, midnight blue.
We left him alone and resurfaced to breath. One released, one to go. We headed out to slightly deeper waters for the second. He darted away, leaving us with a spurt of ink. Several times, he flicked his direction, careering down to the bottom, each time ejecting a jet of black as though it helped propel him forwards. We watched him weave down to the rock floor and find a crevasse to snuggle into, free from other snorkelers now.
Disappearing Act
Once again, we returned to shore and once again Andreas spotted something between two rocks. He came up struggling with a giant octopus more than three times as large as our last two. He wrestled with the thing, shaking his arms and trying to rip the octopus off. He took his arm out of the water, hoping to starve the octopus of oxygen, if only for a moment, to make him weaker. When finally he had the octopus in his grip, I could see clear marks along his arm where the octopus’ strong suction left a line of red rings. I was astounded. Before coming to this beach, Andreas had been unsure as to if we would find anything at all, let alone three octopuses and one large enough to hold in the hand whilst it stretched a tentacle past the elbow. All the way back to the shore, he shot out angry clouds of black. When taken out of the net he writhed out of Andreas’ hands and up his arm, sliding like a snake, and ripping off with a sound like cracking bubble wrap.
The last time we went snorkelling, we drove to the western end of the island, to Polis. The beach was down a cliff from a small grotto, a natural pool of fresh water amidst dense forest known as the Fontana Amorosa, a pool Aphrodite used as her bathing spot.
Steep steps took us down the Cliffside to a narrow pebble beach. To the right, the coastline curved around to the rest of Polis and the final ridge of the Troodos Mountains curving down in languid arcs to the sea from the rough peaks inland. To the left, a great rock strode out of the sea, followed and led by other smaller boulders, like debris from a meteorite striking the beach. Strata were clearly visible in the large rock, tipped up and striking diagonally into the air, as if uplifted by a god searching under stones.
We dropped our stuff a way away from the large outcrop and set off through the water towards it, first passing over small stones and rocks tumbling down from the beach. Not much moved in the empty waters, save for a few urchins flexing their spikes, or the glimmer of a lone fish darting from crack to crevasse. The more barren seafloor continued up to the outcrop before the layers of rock from the outcrop ruptured the stone and sand bed, splitting up and out of the water. All around the great apostle, lumps of rock sat alone, discarded from the main structure when salt and waves had worn it away and created a fissure.
The layered rock had broken and eroded underwater too, splitting to form great chasms and valleys, ridged and ribbed by the strata. A soft sea moss covered the rock, transforming the sharp ridges and harsh lines into soft curves, like the ripples of sand dunes viewed from far away. I swam and dove along the many valleys, sometimes chasing a small group of blue-grey fish, other times pretending to be one myself, following the rock’s façade under itself and around in its twisted, corrugated path.
I followed the underwater hills and mountains around the outcrop, reaching their peak just below the water’s surface before plummeting down on the other side to the expanse of a pebble-strewn sea floor. After feeling like a giant swimming over the ruptured veins of hard and soft limestone, the endless floor fading into the dull dark grey-blue of the depths shrank me down. I was a fish, two inches long, scared to leave the haven of the green hills behind me, afraid of what great creatures may lurk in the murky depths beyond.
I returned to the coral, following this far side of the outcrop as it tamed from corrugated rock to soft, smoothed boulders piling up out of the water to the cliffs on the shore. This was crab country. Andreas picked out several, different to the hamburger crabs of Makronissos, their limbs long and slender, like spiders of the water, with a pebble body streaked in terracotta and navy blue.
Shifting from deeper waters to shallows, the water ran into currents under the water, and sometimes I felt a chill as a ripple of cold passed over me, or a shallow rock pool harboured the sun’s rays, warming the water like hot springs.
Coming out to the shore and unsticking the mask, my face still ached, but I knew I could come back time and time again to experience the calm of the underwater. The Mediterranean, as a starting place for beginners, offers tame waters, but nevertheless waters that are teeming with life if you know where to look. An entire world unbeknownst to me until now exists down under the waves, and I found myself with an irresistible urge: to explore it and wallow in all its beauty.
