Travel: North Cyprus

Published on Friday 31 July 2009 14:51

MILLIONS holiday in Turkey and Cyprus every year, but only tens of thousands in Turkish Cyprus. Officially the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, it suffers a rogue international status, recognised only by its protector Turkey. This political isolation, though, is no reason to shun it as a holiday destination. You do have to touch down in Turkey when you fly there, but that's a minor inconvenience when you consider the rewards.

Cyprus is practically in the Middle East. Its hot Levantine breath blasts you in the face when you step off the aircraft. But English is spoken all over, they drive on the left and have proper three-pin plug-points. Sterling is widely accepted. The British used to rule Cyprus, if not terribly well.

North Cyprus is ideal for a classic Mediterranean pool-and-beach holiday. I stayed at Riverside Holiday Village, a family-run complex lined with oleander and bougainvillea and scented with jasmine. It is within easy reach of half a dozen well-serviced beaches on the island's north coast, and the tourist strip stretching west of the historic port of Kyrenia. Behind it all are the glorious Kyrenia mountains, rising so steeply and to such a narrow ledge that they seem almost two-dimensional, like a painted backdrop. Old Kyrenia is as pretty and charming a harbour as you will find in the Mediterranean.

All of this would be reason enough to go to North Cyprus. But it's also heaven for twitchers, divers, orchid-fanciers, flower-sniffers, turtle-gazers, butterfly-chasers, mountain-bikers and the archeologically inclined. Their respective activities are easily arranged through the hotels and holiday complexes.

Of course, not everything in the garden blooms lovely. The presence of the occupying Turkish army is not always conducive to the holiday mood. On top of this, development along the Kyrenia coastal strip has been rapid and unplanned – casinos jostling with takeaways and restaurants, ugly villas thrown up, too much of it veering towards kitsch. But at least North Cyprus has a bright-lights zone to belie the status suggested by its leading brand of cigar: Backwoods.

And what highlights there are. Take St Hilarion Castle, said to have inspired Disney and resemble the castle in Snow White. Reader, it disnae. But it is magnificently evocative of days of old and the time of the Lusignan Knights, with unmatchable views across Kyrenia bay and a pretty good cardio-vascular workout getting to the top.

Cyprus is messy, like all places where a lot of history has happened, but it soon grows on you. There are ruins galore and buildings that are either half finished or half begun. Whatever has been created, people always seem to have come along with other ideas. And some with no idea at all. The Lusignan cathedral in Famagusta, for instance, was long ago converted into a mosque, its once majestic stained-glass windows now filled in with moulded plaster latticework like something from B&Q.

Famagusta was practically destroyed by Ottoman bombardment in 1571 (bar its resilient Venetian walls), and they still haven't really got round to repairing it. It's where Shakespeare meant by "a seaport in Cyprus". So there's an Othello tower and a Desdemona restaurant. And precious little else. But it does "seen better days" with such weary, half-ruined style, its wedding-dress shops and cheap jewellery outlets adding to the atmosphere, and the men playing backgammon and drinking Turkish coffee in the back streets.

The capital Lefkosa is a similar jumble of altered architectural purposes, most successfully the gorgeous Ottoman Byk Han, reinvented as a chic craft arcade. You don't notice that Lefkosa is still one half of a divided city (Nicosia is the other) with military checkpoints. It's a fun place to shop and to dine, a touch of the oriental bazaar about its narrow old streets.

North Cyprus's unique appeal lies in its relative underdevelopment and freedom from the tourist hordes. The people are gentle and friendly in an old world way. The plumbing and electrics may not always be just so – my hire-car was a tad beat-up – but basically everything works. It's the Mediterranean as it was.

I scrambled over the wonderful Roman and Byzantine ruins at Salamis – no roped-off areas, no officious curators, no health-and-safety people warning me not to scale the amphitheatre. In fact, no-one at all. It did seem like a kind of paradise as I glimpsed the clear blue sea through the broken columns. But then came the realisation that the beach was strewn with plastic. That's the flip-side of underdevelopment: no-one to rake the sand fringing this priceless tourist treasure.

Fortunately they do look after Golden Beach on the island's remote Karpaz peninsula, nesting ground to turtles and quite simply one of the best beaches I've ever been on. Though it's several kilometres long, there were no more than 100 people there on a hot Saturday afternoon – Cypriots and a few independent travellers. Spain once had a virgin crescent of sand like this backed by dunes. It's called Benidorm.

One day the lovely Cypriot people will resolve their differences and North Cyprus will be welcomed back into the fold of nations. It will deservedly become as visited and developed as the south. It will probably adopt the euro and prices will certainly go up. So go now, before that happens and before North Cyprus becomes any more like everywhere else.

fact file n cyprus

Cyprus Turkish Airlines (www.kthy.net) flies to Ercan in North Cyprus via Turkey from Manchester, from around 160 return.

A wealth of information is provided by the North Cyprus Tourism Centre in London (020 7631 1930, www.northcyprus.cc)

David Ronder stayed at Riverside Holiday Village (www.riversideholidayvillage.com), which has two pools and a mini aqua park, as well as a bar and gym. Guests can either cook at home in their apartments or eat in the resort's restaurant.