Makenzy Beach, Larnaca

This Summer will possibly be the first I’ve ever spent away from Cyprus, so here’s a short ode to Makenzy Beach, located in the Southern town of Larnaca.

A wedge of dark yellow beach; you can’t move for umbrellas and the burnt chipolatas of legs that stick out from beneath them. The sand is more than hot — it’s searing. It’s so hot it seems to freeze your feet first, and the only way to make it to the water without suffering too much is to hop from parasol-shadow to parasol-shadow, only moving when you’ve mustered enough courage to brave the next blistering stretch, inevitably invading the personal space of every parasol-user between you and the sea as you do so. The shore initially slopes downwards into the water, but then the sand builds up again after a while so that fifteen or so metres out you suddenly find yourself in warmer, shallower water again. It’s after this little bank that the water gets decisively deeper, colder and darker blue. The water at Makenzy is very salty — (painfully so if you inhale it accidentally) the air has a constant salty smell to it, and the breeze leaves your eyebrows lightly crusted, your skin sticky. The sand consists of fine, brown grains, tightly packed so that the overall appearance of a fistful dredged up from beneath the waves is akin to that of grainy pond sludge. When younger we would use it to paint ourselves head to toe.

Children squeal by the shore, some completely naked and some in mini wetsuits and those jammed-on sunhats that make them look like tiny beekeepers. They sometimes wave at the low-flying planes coming in to Larnaca Airport. The dark sand yields a ripe crop of cigarette stubs which, once you’ve noticed them, can give you the feeling that you’re in a gigantic, suncream-scented ash tray. The creatures furring the beach are a population of tiny brown birds that approach you in tic-like hops, head tilted to one side then the other, hoping for chips. On the sand, they seem to weigh nothing, but leave tiny trident-footprints nonetheless.

The same man wheels his bike slowly up and down the front all day — he’s selling λουγμάδες (log-ma-thes) from a box attached to the front of it. These are fried doughballs soaked in syrup, crisp and brown with a warm, fluffy inside — they leak syrup as you bite into them and taste of sugar and roses. Seeing them you might think this kind of stodgy snack is the last thing you’d want on a humid beach day, but then you taste one and that thought goes right out of the window. He wears a scruffy beige t-shirt despite the seething heat. His wife makes the λουγμάδες. You can locate him on Makenzy beach by looking for the small white bell-shape of his sunhat, or by listening out for the low hum of his voice, which calls out listing his wares, reverberating up and down the beach like like an audio-searchlight. He’ll be there every day of the Summer.