Travel Guide Pachyammos

The village of "thick sand" boasts a superb grey sandy beach (with pebbles) dominated to the northeast by a cemetery and a rocky spur offering fine views over the Tillyrie coast and as far as Cape Kormakitis. Next door, however, is a Blue Helmet post guarding the entrance to the buffer zone around Kokkina/Erenköy, an isolated former village occupied by the Turkish army. This tiny territory of the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus blocks access to the coastal road. As a result, you have to make a long detour through the Troodos to reach Kato Pyrgos, only 8 km away as the crow flies. This is the result of fierce fighting in August 1964, when the Turkish air force dropped napalm on Pachyammos to support Turkish Cypriot militants surrounded by government forces. The village has little in the way of character: it was created in 1932 by the British to exploit the timber from the Paphos forest. After all, it's not far from the Cedar Valley (33 km to the north).