Resting With Generous Hosts (Odou, Cyprus)

Meg:

After playing UNO until the wee hours of the night, drinking wine, and eating more olives, we slept in until 11 am (when the sun sets between 4:00-5:00pm that’s late kids). After getting ready we took a drive to Melini (next town down the mountain) to another cafe/restaurant/market combo, 

we still hadn’t found a place with working wifi to contact our families to let them know we’re not dead. This place had it! They also had some glorious outdoor seating complete with dog, cat, and tons of beautiful plants and flowers. After another delicious cup of “Cyprus Coffee” we finished posting on our blog, quickly checked other means of communication then asked for lunch. The minimal English got us to, “What do you think we should have for a Cyprus lunch?” We were then served a delicious salad of those fresh vegetables they grow in their own gardens: cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, and cabbage with perfect oil and vinegar on the side. You could just TASTE that freshness popping! MMMmmmMMmmm! After the salad came a small bowl of olives (I have never tasted olives as delicious as the olives we’ve had here in Cyprus-Daddy I wish I could send you some) and with it some grilled Haloumi cheese (buhhhh so good I can’t speak) and....sausage which the man noted were “farm” and “organic”. I ate ‘em! Most of you know I am a vegetarian who eats fish (pescatarian) but I had given a lot of thought to our upcoming travel and realized it wouldn’t be very culturally sensitive to stick up my nose at local dishes. Another factor that drew me in was knowing that meat is certainly done differently in countries outside the United States. Standards are set differently and organic and farm raised is more common. Now I’m not planning on eating it everyday, but I will happily devour it when offered. Here’s a picture of our delicious meal:

After the meal and one last e-mail check, we headed back to Odou. When we arrived, we checked our little coffee shop to see if they could take us to the local church. They had offered this the first day, but we were already headed down to the city. Luckily, the woman who has been helping us is married to the priest! He and his humongous beard were at the cafe serving coffees to a few men after long days in the field. He speaks very little English but managed to indicate to us that we should take a picture with our big camera of these guys enjoying their coffee:

We showed them their picture and each one of them cackled at themselves. The man shown on the left then bought us a cup of coffee so we sat and smiled for a little while after saying thank you in Greek a bunch of times. The priest shouted out the door in the middle of us trying to motion with our hands that we wanted to see the church. A few 

minutes later, in walked a man we had befriended the night before...he spoke English. His name is Andres.

Woo! When he came in, he accepted some coffee and told us about how he used to work at an archaeological site. He had so many incredible stories about the history and culture of Cyprus. Then we expressed to him that we wanted to check out the church of Odou. He spoke with the priest, the priest made a call, and 5 minutes later a young boy ran in with an old key the size of a hand. 

The priest thumped it on the table and the four of us went for a walk. Just across the road was the old church built in 1777. 

Walking through the tiny church was fantastic. During our little tour, Andres told us the long history of Odou. We gleaned a few things that we felt were noteworthy:

-A highly praised man (we feel like it was a ‘Saint Something’ but we can’t remember) took the path from a town by the sea, to a town up above Odou called Thamus

-He helped to create and lovingly name the town of Odou meaning “Road” as it was a town set on the path, or road, that he took up the mountain

-When the church was built, the school was built on the church’s land

-For ease and proximity, more people began building houses surrounding the church and school which brings us to the current population which is between 120 and 150 depending on the season

The priest realized our guy would be talking for a while, so he gave us a wave and locked up the church. We continued to ask Andres questions while he lead us out of the church yard. He said, “Let me show you my home.” We thought we may have another walk ahead of us, but he turned the corner and there it was. 

He mentioned a few times that he was a gardner, but we didn’t expect his house to reflect his expertise as well as it did. Hopefully you can see the grapes dangling from his “garage roof”. It was just so beautiful and natural to see a house surrounded in growing fruits and vegetables. He welcomed us in and introduced us to his wife. She washed the clump of grapes he had just picked from the roof and set them on the table along with fresh figs and another tiny weird fruit that he forgot the English word for, but apparently it had a nut inside. It tasted like a tiny sour pear. The grapes were the best grapes we’ve ever tasted, no exaggeration and the figs were so delicious. He also gave us each a clementine reminding us that everything came from his fields. His wife took us on a nonverbal tour of their refrigerator magnets of every city they’ve traveled to and he took us on a tour of his house before sending us on our way. We are still baffled by the generosity of this man and this town. We are so blessed to be on this trip and my husband (after at first regretting choosing a place so far away on the first night that caused so much frustration) chose this place perfectly. I am so grateful for him and this adventure. Tomorrow we fly to Athens!!!!