weather proof | 8 nights | from $1,980 per person
Cyprus Vacation Package: Two Bases, Eight Nights
This Cyprus vacation package splits eight nights between the mountains and the coast. A bad run of weather costs you one afternoon on the water and the top of one ridge, and leaves the rest of the week standing.
What weather proof means here
Rain in Cyprus in the shoulder seasons comes in short bursts and clears. It moves a walk to the afternoon, or a swim to the next day. Nothing in this Cyprus vacation package rests on one clear morning, which is why it sits in the lowest of the four bands used across this site.
- What the weather can cancel
- The three hour boat trip along the west coast, and the top section of the ridge walk above 1,700 m. Both stand down in wind or low cloud, and everything else in the week has a wet weather version already written into the notes.
- How often it actually happens
- In April and October the boat sits out about one departure in eight; by late May it is closer to one in twenty. Cloud or late snow shuts the high ridge on roughly 1 day in 15 in April, and almost never after mid May.
- What you do instead
- The boat moves to the next calm morning at the same base, which is why it is placed in the first half of the week. If the whole stay blows out, you walk the same stretch of coast from the land side, about 9 km, and the boat money stays where it was paid.
- What money comes back
- None, and none from us in particular, because we hold no traveler money at any stage. The boat operator keeps a canceled seat fee of around $30 a person. The two properties and the rental car are priced by the night and the day, and weather does not change either.
- Who should not book this
- Anyone booking this for swimming in March or April. The sea sits at 17 to 19C then, and no rearranging fixes that. Also not for travelers who want an hour by hour program, since half of this week is decided each morning against the sky.
The fourth row is the one this trade prints smallest, and on most of these trips it says nothing comes back. It stands above the price deliberately.
Where the $1,980 goes
- Eight nights split four and four: a village at about 900 m in the Troodos foothills, then a coastal base west of Limassol
- A rental car for all eight days, with gravel forest roads written into the cover, so a wet morning can be spent driving between villages instead of walking
- Breakfast at both bases, plus two set dinners in the village, where the next kitchen is 6 km down the hill
- One guided walk of about 11 km on the west coast path, with a second date held in the same week at no extra cost
- A boat trip of roughly three hours along the west coast, placed early in the week on purpose
- Written notes for six marked trails between 2 and 14 km, four of which read the same in rain as in sun
- Transfers from either arrival airport, 45 to 90 minutes depending on which one you land at
What the price leaves out
- Getting to the island. Air fares are priced on their own and sit outside the $1,980
- Lunches and most dinners, realistically $25 to $40 a person a day
- Fuel, about $70 across the week for the 450 to 550 km this route usually runs
- Entry to the archaeological sites and the painted churches, $3 to $13 each, six or seven of them over eight days
- Travel insurance. We do not arrange it, and we do not send you to anyone who does
- Anything added on the day: a second boat, a tasting at a wine estate, a taxi back from dinner
What it costs
from $1,980 per person
- Covering
- 8 nights, two base island week, mountains and coast.
- Taken as read
- A room shared between two, except where any of the six otherwise for your case.
- What lifts it
- A crowded month, a better room, a decision left late, and every hour you hand to somebody else to arrange.
- When it stops moving
- The moment an operator signs its own name under it. Before that, read it as the floor of a spread this desk has actually seen.
You settle with the operator, through whatever system they run. Not a cent of it passes through here, and this office never sees a card.
The months this trip runs in
The week runs mid March to early June, then mid September to early November. Those are the months the whole thing is built around. April averages about 2 rain days on the coast, May about 1, October about 3, and the rain that does fall is usually done inside an hour. Daytime highs sit at 22 to 26C in spring and 26 to 29C in October.
From late November the coast picks up 9 to 12 rain days a month, and above 1,400 m the Troodos holds snow from January into March, with the ridge road closed for a day or two at a time. A two base week stops making sense then, because the mountain half of it turns into sitting indoors at altitude.
The two stretches I would talk you out of are the last two weeks of August, when the inland plain runs past 38C and walking is possible only before 8am, and anything after the first week of November, when rain days roughly double and the sea drops below 21C. If those are your only dates, say so early and we will look at a different shape of trip instead.
What is still open at confirmation
Confirmation, and nothing earlier, decides four questions: whether the mountains come first or the coast does, which of the two airports you fly into, whether the car is manual or automatic, and which night the boat is held for. The last one is set against the forecast in the week before you travel, not months out.