Cape Greco is a low headland of white limestone at the southeastern corner of Cyprus, between Ayia Napa and Protaras. It reaches further east than any other ground in the country, so the sun clears the water here before anywhere else on the island. The sea has been taking the cape apart from underneath. At the foot of the cliffs it has cut galleries into the rock, the Palatia caves, the palaces. The water inside them is clear enough for you to read the stones on the floor, and light bouncing off the pale bottom fills the chamber with blue. You swim in from the cove with a mask. Ledges a few metres above the water turn the same coves into diving boards, though the depth and the swell you jump into are different every day. From the clifftop path 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.
The cape's signature span is Kamara tou Koraka, the Crow's Arch, which faces straight out to sea and is fenced now, because a crack has opened through it while the waves eat the rock underneath. The path takes you on to the tip through juniper and thyme scrub pressed flat by the wind, and boats from Ayia Napa and Protaras work the inlets with no way down from the land, the Blue Lagoon among them. Two birds nest in that low scrub and breed on no other island, the Cyprus warbler and the Cyprus wheatear. From mid-March to May the headland works as a bottleneck for much bigger birds, and red-footed falcons, pallid harriers and honey buzzards ride the morning thermals north over the tip. The fishermen here have a name for whatever sometimes takes their nets: To Filiko Teras, the friendly monster. For nearly half a century the tallest things here were not rock but steel, a forest of masts broadcasting to the Middle East. They went silent in 2019 and came down in 2021, and the tallest thing out here is limestone again.