Our house sit hosts were going to their apartment in Northern Cyprus. Being an apartment, it was not conducive to housing four large dogs and four cats. That’s where we came in. It was a baptism of fire for a couple of rookie house sitters.
We arrived a couple of days before they took off so we could learn the exercising and feeding routine. Werner took me on the beach run with the four dogs in their 4WD Ute. It was about a twenty minute drive from their house, past a military base and onto the salt plains. That’s where we let the hounds loose! The four of them, barking excitedly ran off in all directions while we continued to drive another two kilometres to the beach, slowly, over sand hills tooting the horn regularly and screaming out their names. It was sheer madness! I really wished Linda had come along on the trial because I knew she was going to freak the first time we did it ourselves. The oldest of the dogs, a basset hound appropriately named ‘Fred’ would lag behind trotting with his little legs at his own pace, sometimes falling so far back we would lose sight of him. “Don’t worry” says Werner, “he always turns up”. When we arrived at the beach, a couple of them jumped into the waves and the other two scoured the sand hills.
Then, after I’d had a swim (because one of the girls won’t go in unless you go with her) we got the treats and water out to lure them back to the car. All fairly straight forward as its routine for them. The important thing I had to remember was the order to let them back into the car. Old Fred liked his spot by the window behind the driver and if anyone else was sitting there they’d be hell to pay!
On the way back to the house Werner pointed out a supermarket that provided ‘free beer’ from a keg at the entrance. What a brilliant idea! I Knew immediately where we were going to doing all our shopping.
Nicki and Werner were all set to leave. It’s a bit weird seeing people off from their house as you go back inside. But we have had a thorough run down on exercising the dogs, feeding the cats and how to access the community pool. The cats were going to be easy but did I mention that one of the older cats was totally blind? The first night we were there, we could hear a cat meowing loudly. It was Mischief (the blind one) sitting in the middle of the street out the front demanding that I carry him inside! I could sense from that moment that Mischief was going to be high maintenance.
Then came time to do our first ‘beach run’. A blisteringly hot afternoon, as they had been in Cyprus, we prepared the snacks and filled bottles with water, systematically loaded the dogs into the ute and headed for the beach. As I expected,Linda was beside herself as I let the dogs out and proceed to drive off tooting the horn. One of them ran like a greyhound and liked to chase cars. So on the rare occasion a car drove past in the opposite direction, she’d be off, trying to chew it’s rear tyres! Then Linda discovered that Fred had disappeared out of view, and nearly had a meltdown. But shortly after we arrived at our designated place on the beach, they started appearing one after the other, with old Fred bringing up the rear.
After a swim we gathered them up with the treats and they lapped up litres of water. I was so excited about rounding them all up, that, as I opened the door to let them in, there was an almighty shitfight with growling and snapping! Yes, I had forgot about Fred’s special seat and he paid out on the other male dog that dared to sit in his place. No blood or missing teeth so all was good. A quick head count and we were on our way.
I mentioned to Linda that we needed to pick a few things up from the supermarket, so she waited in the ute with the soggy, sandy dogs while I darted inside. Sure enough, there was a keg at the entrance and a bowl of crisps! I poured myself a glass and, conscious of Linda waiting in the car, drank it down so quickly I gave myself ‘brain freeze’. Karma, I guess!
We thoroughly enjoyed our first house sit and besides Mischief pushing a statue onto the floor, a mirror falling off the wall and a garden hose bursting, we managed to present four dogs, four cats and a house that was still standing to the owners on their return, so I do believe we succeeded.
We did manage some sightseeing during the week, with a drive into the Troodos mountains one day and a trip to Paphos on another, as well as a trip to ‘old town’ Limassol.
When Nicki and Werner arrived back from the north they kindly treated us to a meal at one of their favourite restaurants. It was the night of the moon eclipse and as we dined outdoors it made for a very pleasant evening.
We booked an apartment in central Larnaca for our final two days in Cyprus. That gave us the opportunity to catch up with Mark and Jane (from Santorini) who had been staying in Larnaca, for a meal. We were able to provide them with travel tips for touring Cyprus while they provided us with some useful information for our upcoming visit to France.
Having collected our suitcase from the apartment of our initial stay in Larnaca, it was off to the airport for our flight to Athens where we had an overnight stay before flying to Bordeaux.
Overall, a pleasant, interesting stay in Cyprus with the coincidental opportunity to experience our first house sit in Europe.
See you in France.