Kavo Gkreko

The Εθνικό Δασικό Πάρκο Κάβο Γκρέκο is the headland at the island's southeastern corner, 385 hectares of white limestone shelf declared in 1993 between two of the Mediterranean's busiest resort coasts — Ayia Napa on one side, Protaras on the other — and it is precisely that position that makes the park remarkable: a raw karst cape kept empty in the middle of Cyprus's most developed shoreline. The sea has cut the edge into the island's best coastal rock architecture. Wave-worked caves run under the cliffs on the Ayia Napa side; at the eastern face the collapsed roof of one of them left the Kamara tou Koraka, a natural arch striding into the sea; and the water over the shelf holds the glass-blue clarity that fills every brochure the district prints, honestly for once.

Above the cliff line the park is garrigue — Phoenician juniper, lentisc and thyme on karren pavement — and it is a Natura 2000 site for good reason. Botanists have logged around four hundred plant species on this small shelf, among them fourteen orchids including the endemic Kotschy's bee orchid, and in the first warm weeks of spring the flat top of the cape turns briefly and completely into flower. Migration is the other spectacle: the headland is a natural landfall and departure point on the eastern flyway, and passage mornings can drop wheatears, shrikes and warblers all over the juniper.

The cape's furniture tells its modern history. The white chapel of Agioi Anargyroi stands photogenically over a sea cave on the southern edge, with steps down to the water; the lighthouse holds the high point; and the fenced aerial farm on the tip itself — for decades the Middle East relay station of Radio Monte Carlo — is the reason the actual cape is the one part of the park you cannot walk. The park's five carved-out enclaves, the antenna field first among them, are excluded from the protected area on paper exactly as they are fenced off on the ground.

What's worth knowing before you go

The park is minutes from either resort, and the E4 European long-distance path crosses it along the cliff edge — the walk from Konnos Bay past the chapel to the arch and on toward the sea caves is the best short coastal hike on the island, best at first light before the quad-bike hour. Swimming is from rock, not sand: locals go off the ledges below the caves in calm weather. Spring and autumn are the seasons; high summer is shadeless and fierce. Two details worth knowing: the arch is for looking at, not standing on — the rock is undercut and signs mean it — and the name is older than the resorts by centuries, appearing on Venetian charts as Capo Greco, the Greek Cape, the landfall sailors from the Levant sighted first.