You may be surprised to hear that it snows in Cyprus, and this year it snowed a lot! We’ve had flakes a few times in Nicosia but nothing that has ever stuck. It gets cold enough to snow even in the foothills, but most of the real white fluffy stuff is concentrated in the Troodos Mountains. Unfortunately, as soon as it snows in any volume, they close the mountain roads to all vehicles except those with snow chains. Obviously we aren’t going to buy chains just to go up once or twice, so we hadn’t been. Fortunately, it snowed enough that even two or three weeks after the last big storm there was snow on Mount Olympus, which is Cyprus’ tallest mountain at about 6,400 feet.
The snow cone at the top of the mountain is actually a radar station belonging to the British military:
There is a saying that Cyprus is one of the few places you can go skiing in the morning and swimming in the afternoon, but I assure you that is not something you would ever want to do. It is late May and the water has only just recently become bearable enough to swim in for some people (still too cold for me), so it’s hard to imagine anyone taking a dip in February unless they had a dry suit. Still, it is pretty surreal to think that you can go skiing in the middle of the Mediterranean.
We weren’t dressed appropriately for the cold and snow, so we scurried along to have lunch at a local hotel, which was giving off a very heavy late 70s ski lodge vibe.