In the springtime Foinikas turns yellow. I first noticed this phenomenon a few years ago. We were showing visiting relatives around and we thought they would like to visit the village. We were taken aback with what we saw, and we recorded it in our first blog on Foinikas.

I just had a quick look at that article. If you look at it you can see what Foinikas is like when the reservoir waters are low. Hard to believe I wrote that over five years ago. Time sure does fly...

Anyway, what has that got to do with this photograph? Well, I have been trying for a couple of years to capture Foinikas again when it is golden yellow. Lockdown prevented me in 2020. Last year I managed to get there, but the weather was so gloomy and overcast that the photographs looked terrible.

Now, because the reservoir is full, I couldn't get to Foinikas from the Paphos end of the reservoir, as the road is under water. The road from Nata was out too, as it goes down the river which is quite obviously running. So instead, I decided to drive to the hill above the village, and hike down from there. I had a big bag to hold my assorted cameras and drone. My main concern though, was the weather. As you can see, it was getting a bit moody.

I filmed my walk down the hill and will publish it at a later date. It isn't the best film I've ever made, as I was trying out a new microphone with a "dead cat" muffler. I hadn't realised that if you don't position it correctly the hair gets in front of the camera if the wind blows. And the wind was blowing a lot. However, it does show the route, and it is a nice walk, so I will see what I can salvage.

I made it down the hill, but the weather got worse and it even started raining, On top of that, the wind meant that I couldn't fly the drone. However, on the way down I noticed that somebody had driven a truck to the fields next to Foinikas. Whoever it was looked like they were harvesting wild asparagus or something similar. They had gone by the time I arrived in the village, but it indicated that the road from Nata was in fact doable. So the trip wasn't a complete loss.

Eventually it stopped raining, and I lugged all my equipment back to the top of the hill. I was tempted to leave it all in one of the abandoned buildings but I don't think it would have gone down well if they had gone missing.

It was a lot harder getting back up the hill, I can tell you!