Cape Greco (Cavo Greco)

CavesFamagusta,Cyprus

A limestone headland undercut by the sea into caves and arches, where the sun clears the water before anywhere else in Cyprus.

September·Peaking now

Sep–Oct

The golden window: the sea holds bath-warm at 28°C in September easing to 26°C in October, cave snorkelling and cliff jumps stay easy, and the autumn raptor passage builds over the tip as the summer crowds thin. Boats run to early November.

Year-round The limestone cliffs, sea caves and blue water are here every day, and the park stays open all year; what changes is the sea's warmth, the bird and flower seasons, and whether the boats run.

Cape Greco is a low limestone headland at the southeastern corner of Cyprus, undercut by the sea into caves and arches. The rock is pale and soft, so the waves have hollowed the cliff base into caverns that locals call the Palatia, the Palaces, and punched clean through it in more than one place to leave a natural bridge. The water below runs from cyan to deep indigo for a plain reason: the seabed is white rock, the sea carries almost nothing to cloud it, and the light comes back up blue. By late morning the coves work as swimming pools, with people dropping off the low cliffs into deep water and snorkelling through the caves at the base of the white rock. It is 385 hectares of thin soil and low scrub, and there is no resort on any of it. This is the easternmost land in the island's government-controlled south, so the sun clears the sea here before it reaches anywhere else in Cyprus. That is why people set an alarm for this cape instead of saving it for the evening, and why the rock everyone photographs is Kamara tou Koraka, the Crow's Arch, with the sunrise sitting inside the span. The arch is fenced now. A crack runs through it, and the sea that cut the hole is busy taking the rest, so the shape in your photograph is a temporary one. Turn inland and the interest drops to ankle height: around 400 plant species grow in this thin soil, fourteen of them found nowhere but Cyprus. In spring the headland works as a bottleneck for migration, and red-footed falcons, pallid harriers and honey buzzards cross here on their way north. Since 1993 the cape has been a national forest park, so the sky you scan for them holds nothing but rock, scrub and sea.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Don't climb onto the Crow's Arch — it is fenced because a crack runs through the span and the rock beneath is undercut. Photograph it from the clifftop path a few metres back.
Mid-morning is the raptor hour — thermals lift falcons and harriers over the headland, and the open ground near the tip gives you the clearest sky to scan.
Wear reef shoes and read the swell — the limestone is sharp underfoot, and on windy days the surge inside the sea caves turns an easy snorkel into a hard one.
Boats from Ayia Napa and Protaras reach the coves around midday — swim the caves early, then hand them over and take the clifftop path instead.

Things to do

1
Snorkel the Palatia caves and jump the ledges
The sea has cut galleries into the base of the white cliffs, and the water inside is clear enough to read the rock on the bottom. Swim in from the cove with a mask and light bouncing off the pale floor fills the chamber with blue. Ledges a few metres up turn the same coves into a diving board — check the depth and the swell every time, because yesterday's spot may not be safe today.
2
Watch the sun come up through the Crow's Arch
Kamara tou Koraka, the cape's signature span of rock, looks straight out at the sunrise. Arrive before first light and the sun lifts out of the sea beyond it, turning the arch into a black frame with the whole eastern Mediterranean glowing inside it. The water underneath is usually dead calm at that hour.
3
Follow the clifftop path out to the cape's tip
A path runs along the top of the cliffs, above the caves and coves, through juniper and thyme scrub pressed flat by the wind. From up there the coastline reads as a row of blue rooms — each cove a slightly different shade, depending on how deep the white floor lies beneath it.
4
Take a boat into the coves the path can't reach
Boats run out of Ayia Napa and Protaras to inlets with no way down from the land, including the Blue Lagoon on the cape's western side. From the water you finally see how the sea built these cliffs — undercut, hollowed, and stacked with caves you can only enter by swimming.

Watch

Nearby

138 km