One island, two hours end to end. Spend them well.
Which Blue Lagoon boat actually anchors long enough to swim. What the Troodos day out of Paphos costs. Whether Salamis is worth the border crossing. Reviews of every tour you can book in Cyprus.
The four days a first week in Cyprus is built around.
A lagoon, a bus-and-boat, a mountain road and a cave coast. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The short boat dayTurtle Cove & Blue Lagoon CruiseThree hours out of Protaras harbour with an anchored hour over the sand at Konnos. The cheapest way onto the water.
02The long boat dayBlue Lagoon (Akamas) Bus & Boat Tour with Water Slide from PaphosCoach across the Akamas, then the boat in from Latchi. The water slide is the reason children agree to the bus.
03The day inlandTroodos Mountains & Villages Guided Day TripKykkos, a painted church and a village lunch, up the Troodos road out of Paphos. The one argument for leaving the coast.
04The cave coastEast Coast National Park: Half-Day Caves Jeep SafariHalf a day of jeep tracks along Cape Greco and the sea caves, on roads a hire car has no business on.
Four ways to spend a Cypriot day at sea. Pick the deck.
The island is small and the interior is hot, so the good day usually starts at a harbour. Four kinds of sailing, what it costs to board each one, and which coast it leaves from.
Everyone comes to Cyprus for one bay. Here is how to reach it.
The lagoon sits on the Akamas peninsula, unreachable by ordinary road. Boats run in from Latchi harbour and from Paphos, jeeps come over the headland tracks, and the Protaras and Ayia Napa cruises reach the eastern caves instead. Same water, four different days.
What a day out in Cyprus actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what it costs. A short evening sail off Larnaca comes in under the price of two rounds in Ayia Napa.
Sunset sailings, glass-bottom hours, the short Protaras cruises and the village walks.
The standards: bus-and-boat to the lagoon, Troodos by minibus, jeep safaris and the Famagusta crossing.
Private guides, chartered decks, all-inclusive wine days and the dives that need a boat of their own.
The Cypriot days out more travellers take than any other.
Every Cyprus tour we have reviewed →Sorted the way the island actually books: the boats first, then the mountains, then everything that happens after dark.
1
Turtle Cove & Blue Lagoon Cruise
Take a three-hour cruise from Protaras Pier along Cyprus’ east coast. You’ll pass Cape Greco, Konnos Bay, Lover’s Bridge, Shark’s Mouth, and Pirate’s Cave, then swim at Blue Lagoon and Turtle Cove. An English-speaking guide provides local history, while the boat offers shade, toilets, Wi-Fi, music, and a bar.
From · $35
Read our review →2
Blue Lagoon (Akamas) Bus & Boat Tour with Water Slide from Paphos
from $54
3
Blue Lagoon & Turtle Cruise with Optional Lunch
from $41
4
Blue Lagoon Bus & Boat Tour with Water Slide
from $53
5
Cpt Marko – Blue Lagoon & Turtle Cruise with Optional Lunch
from $42
6
Lazy Day Cruise, Turtle Cove, Blue Lagoon & Lunch
from $53
7
Blue Lagoon and Baths of Aphrodite Day Trip
from $53
8
100% Cyprus – Tour to Troodos mountains and villages (From Paphos)
from $66
Above 1,000 metres Cyprus turns into a different country.
Pine forest, cold springs, villages built for snow, and Commandaria — the dessert wine the Crusaders named, still pressed from sun-dried grapes on the southern slopes. Go up by minibus for the churches and the lunch, or by Land Rover for the tracks the churches sit on.
Six towns, and the best day out of each.
Paphos for the west coast and the Akamas boats, Protaras and Ayia Napa for the cave water, Larnaca for the shortest transfer, Limassol for the wine country, Nicosia for the only capital still cut in half.
Paphos: harbour in the morning, mountain road after lunch.
Everything in Paphos →
More than a third of everything bookable on this island leaves from Paphos, and it leaves in three directions: west along the Akamas by water, north over the headland by jeep, and up the mountain road to the painted churches. These three carry more travellers than anything else in the west.
Boat all the way, or coach then boat
The direct sailings leave Paphos harbour and take the long way round the headland. The bus-and-boat runs you across the Akamas by coach and puts you on the water at Latchi, which buys more swimming and less engine noise.
Over the Akamas by Land Rover
The headland tracks are closed to hire cars and rough enough that you would not want to try. A safari day strings the Baths of Aphrodite, Lara Bay and the gorge together, then drops down to the lagoon from above.
Kykkos, Omodos and the painted churches
The road out of Paphos climbs into pine forest and cold air within an hour. Monasteries, a barn-roofed church with fourteenth-century frescoes, and a village lunch where the halloumi is made in the room next door.
Three things that happen in Cyprus and nowhere else.
Warm sea and old ruins are Mediterranean standard issue. A lagoon with no road to it, ten barn-roofed churches carrying frescoes nobody painted over, and a resort abandoned mid-season in 1974 are not.
The Blue Lagoon
The bay sits at the top of the Akamas peninsula, inside a national forest park with no surfaced road running to it. That is the whole reason it stays the colour it is. Boats come in from Latchi twenty minutes down the coast, jeeps grind over the headland tracks from the Baths of Aphrodite, and the sand underneath is pale enough to throw the light back up through six metres of water.
- 1Turtle Cove & Blue Lagoon Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 2,626 reviews
- 2Blue Lagoon (Akamas) Bus & Boat Tour with Water Slide from Paphos★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,496 reviews
- 3Blue Lagoon & Turtle Cruise with Optional Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 2,244 reviews
The painted churches
Ten small churches in the Troodos range carry Byzantine wall paintings that survived four centuries of Ottoman rule because nobody thought them worth destroying. Most are barn-roofed, built low against the snow, and look from outside like farm sheds. Inside, the plaster is covered floor to ridge. Several keep their key with a neighbour, which is why a guide beats a hire car here.
- 1100% Cyprus – Tour to Troodos mountains and villages (From Paphos)★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,562 reviews
- 2Troodos Mountains & Villages Guided Day Trip★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,531 reviews
- 3Troodos Mountains Villages: All Inclusive Food & Wine Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 610 reviews
The ghost quarter
Varosha was the busiest beach resort in the eastern Mediterranean until August 1974, when its residents left in a single afternoon and never came back. The hotels are still standing on the sand, empty, forty-odd storeys of them, and a marked walking route now runs through part of the quarter. Tours pair it with the Roman city at Salamis half an hour up the coast.
- 1Famagusta and Salamis Day Trip★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 559 reviews
- 2Famagusta, Blue Lagoon and Turtle Cove Boat Trip★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 428 reviews
- 3Ghost-Town Famagusta Mini Bus Tour from Protaras and Ayia Napa★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 298 reviews
Four Cypriot bookings that will not wait for your arrival.
Most of this island can be arranged at a hotel desk the night before. These four run on harbour timetables, pickup windows and a border crossing that takes no interest in your holiday schedule.
- 01Turtle Cove & Blue Lagoon CruiseThe lagoon boats sail on set harbour departures, a handful a day from each port, and the July and August sailings fill well before the week starts.
- 02100% Cyprus – Tour to Troodos mountains and villages (From Paphos)Mountain days are one departure a morning, and the pickup window is decided by which coast your hotel is on, not by when you are ready.
- 03Famagusta and Salamis Day TripSalamis and Varosha are the far side of a border crossing. Carry the passport you flew in on, and expect one bus a morning.
- 04Introductory Scuba Lesson and Dive with TransferDive slots are capped by boat space and instructor ratio, and the intro courses need your paperwork done before the morning briefing.
Ayia Napa and Protaras keep the clearest water on the island.
Cape Greco is a headland of sea caves, arches and water that reads pale green over white rock. The boats are short, cheap and leave every couple of hours, which makes the east coast the easiest place in Cyprus to get onto the sea on a whim.
Every Ayia Napa day out →
Salamis, Kourion, Choirokitia: three thousand years in one drive.
Cyprus was worth taking, so everybody took it. A Roman theatre cut into the cliff above Kourion, a colonnaded gymnasium at Salamis on the far east coast, and a neolithic village at Choirokitia that predates all of it. The Salamis day is a border crossing; bring the passport you flew in on.
- 1Famagusta and Salamis Day Tripfrom $64
- 2Famagusta, Blue Lagoon and Turtle Cove Boat Tripfrom $29
- 3Ghost-Town Famagusta Mini Bus Tour from Protaras and Ayia Napafrom $60
When the coast reads 38 and the tarmac gives up.
July and August are hotter here than anywhere else in the Mediterranean, and the inland plain around Nicosia is the worst of it. The Troodos ridge sits a thousand metres up and runs eight to ten degrees cooler all summer. That is the answer to the middle of a Cypriot afternoon: go up, eat late, and come back down for the evening swim.
By town — west coast, east coast, capital
Paphos, Latchi, Troodos, Limassol, Larnaca, Protaras: the loop most people drive.
TroodosThe newest Cyprus tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Famagusta and Salamis or Ghosttown with a private guide
Read our review →
Explore the coastline blue lagoon and sea caves on Protaras.
Read our review →
