Vanessa | About finding the right path

For the past week I’ve been having trouble sleeping. I go to bed quite early and try to knock myself out with reading and listening to music cause if I just lay in bed waiting to fall asleep my mind is rushing like crazy. Just can’t seem to shut it off. And once I manage to fall asleep I wake up during the night like 100 times going to the bathroom or drinking water or just to check what time it is. Usually this behaviour would frustrate me but now I’m just waiting this phase to pass since I really don’t have to be anywhere early in the morning.

This past night was no exception so I decided to get up and head to the living room and maybe try to write something. It started to rain. It feels nice to listen the rain hitting the windows and every piece of junk that is out there. It’s making me falling asleep…

I woke up a few hours later. It’s getting brighter but since the weather will remain the same throughout the day I don’t think It’s gonna get much brighter anyway. I love those kind of days. Sometimes they are just what I need.

Now how the hell are we doing? First let me tell you we live on the edge of a town/village called Paralimni, which is in the Famagusta region, on the south Greek side of the island. About 7 min drive to the East coast of Protaras, 15 min drive to the South coast of Ayia Napa, 40 min drive from Larnaca International Airport and 15 min drive to the border crossing for the Northern Turkish side of the island. Therefore our apartment backyard leads to the beach among the farmer’s fields where they grow different vegetables such as artichokes, brocoli, zucchini, tomatoes, egg plants and I could go on and on. Of course we wanted to explore this part as well and we did but…

It took us three attempts to finally reach the beach behind the house. The first time a little storm caught us and the iced rain was pretty unpleasant to continue so we headed home. The second time we managed to almost get there but somewhere on the way we bumped into a big sign of UN territory and a warning sign stating to be aware of a mines. Well we did not expect the mines but figured we were safe if we stayed on the road. So we continued our little trip towards the beach. Suddenly we heard a loud noise which a giant military jeep was making, speeding on the other side of the ‘mine field’ towards the direction we were headed. We would not pay that much attention to that as we knew that the military is close by but since it was rushing so much we figured we were spotted. As we were approaching closer and closer we could see a military watch tower in the distance. A military guy with a rifle just came out of it and rushed down the stairs and disappeared. This was a point that we started thinking if heading to the beach is good idea at all. For sure this military guy was about to wait for us and we could not risk the chance of getting our camera to be taken away since we were fooling arround recording stuff along the way and taking selfies. We decided to head back and at this moment we started to feel an adrenalin rushing through our body. It made us really nervous. Honestly, I like unexpected situations and hate it when everything is planned and thought through ahead. I like to challenge myself and improvise so I encourage Davor to be a little more on that side as well. I must say he is cooping with me very well so far. And I admit I can be really tough but so is he on a completely opposite side and we somehow manage to establish a good compromise between our personalities so we function perfectly. And I love that about us.

Anyway we almost gave up on that beach behind the house but something did not let us just yet. The third time we decided to try we tried to follow the path more to the right side and farther from the Famagusta direction. We thought this was our key to success :). After a few dead ends, few improvised passes through high grass and pathless territory (which I’m really squeamish about since I’m terrified of possibly running to a snake) and also a few strange signs in greek language and a bunch of hand written warnings on the cloths which are covering the freshly grown produce: ‘poison for cats and dogs’, we finally managed to reach the fucking beach! It was beautiful and clean. Of cours we took a billion pictures and recorded a video as it would be the last time we’d see this beautiful thing. But we made it even if we had to disturb some military guys, pass the mine field and pass the untouched and poisonous areas, we were on the beach and that was all that mattered.

Later on we found out that we were really risking by wandering around that restricted area but i still encourage the idea of sometimes knowing less so you can keep striving towards your goal rather than knowing too much which eventually can lead to giving up too quickly. Just a little thought for the end. 🙂