By Bejay Browne.
Thousands of visitors flocked to the tiny village of Kritou Terra in Paphos over the summer, peaking at around 90,000 in the summer months, which has led to logistical and safety issues, according to the local community leader.
The village is steeped history and traditional and among other pulls, is home to the beautiful Kremmiotis waterfalls.
Community leader, Dervis Charalambous, told the Paphos Post that around 1,000 cars daily drove to the waterfalls using one of the access roads and a further 500 a day used the road from Polis. He estimates that each car has a least 2 people inside, which equates to 3,000 visitors a day.
Concerned about a number of issues affecting the village, he said that the huge increase in traffic has led to a number of safety issues being brought to the fore, in particular, the danger that fires could pose to the public.
This was highlighted by a recent fire in the area, which thankfully occurred away from the Kremmiotis Waterfall, he said, as that could have been disastrous. The council has already placed warning signs along the route.
“It is very dangerous if a fire breaks out, and we have all of these people visiting the waterfalls here. It is quite difficult to get out of this spot and near the river, it would be impassible for people to exit the area quickly,” he said.
The community council has also placed a meter on the road leading to the falls, in order to obtain traffic statistics to ensure that the correct measures can be taken, he said.
There has been a rise in popularity of the nature trail and waterfall over the past few years due to work to make it more accessible to the public. This has left the small and ageing community trying to deal with a slew of problems created by the huge volume of visitors.
Charalambous said that it is hard to cope without the support of the state and the authorities.
“I have told the President that we need some money to improve things in the area, for example we have two roads leading to the waterfalls, and there is a river in the middle. We need to connect them by a bridge, but it would be difficult as the river is high and it would be costly,” he said.
The project would cost in excess of around 100,000 euros he said.
“We just don’t have the money and I am hoping that we can get some help from the state,” he said.
A number of attractions in the village, not least the Kremmiotis Waterfalls, provide great photo opportunities for visitors and Cypriots have mostly holidayed at home this year, exploring local villages and visiting the islands many attractions.
“This has meant that we have had thousands of visitors this year and this has helped the local economy, but we have been so very busy and most of the residents here are elderly and over the age of 70,” he said.
The village also has a restaurant, cafe and ice cream shop which have all been kept busy and other attractions include beautiful churches, an old casino,, the old ‘laundry’, a number of watermills and traditional stone houses, he said.
With the thousands of visitors have come tonnes of rubbish left around the waterfall area on a daily basis, he said, and includes, used bottles, empty cigarette packets and all sorts of other rubbish.
“The community has been busy this year but it has been difficult.There is no-one to clean the area and I don’t know why these people leave their rubbish here.”
So, every day, Charalambous takes a truck and clears the rubbish himself.
“There is no-one to help me and its been a big problem,” he said.
