by SKI-preo » Thu Jul 29, 2010 4:18 am
Below is a funny review I read on a Skiing website
Visitor Reviews of Mt Olympus
Jimmy from Cyprus writes:
On the one hand, someone could claim that we are lucky to even have snow in Cyprus let alone a resort (Mt Olympus). This is the argument of idiot Cypriot politicians with a brain the size of a pea and balls the size of a sand grain.
Cypriots (and I am one of them) are incapable of taking initiative, having a vision of the future and taking action to implement a vision.
What we have today, we owe to the sun, the beach and the English. We did nothing on our own to improve anything. If Cyprus were located in Central or northern Europe, we would still be living in caves.
The "rental shop" is ready to collapse, leaking from all sides, broken muddy floors. They did not even install an A/C in there. It is exactly as it was a few decades ago. No improvement. An embarrasment to every Cypriot and even European citizen (as we are part of EU now, go figure)
The people who work there (Mt Olympus), have no clue and the equipment can get you killed.
The road leading to Sun valley 1 (and the ski shop) is a death trap in winter. It is narrow, cars are bumper to bumper and they do not know how to clean it property. So it is basically an ice skating ring. There are accidents every year but who cares, right?
The Troodos square; they rennovated it a few years ago. It cannot even fit two cars. It has no amenities.
The whole of Troodos square and the pistes, have no parking spaces. They accomodate about 10% of visitors, with the rest having to park on the side of the road, creating a death hazard and traffic jams.
The lifts are archaic. They only changed the Zeus drag lift and installed an archaic chair lift which they did not even operate last year because they are simply stupid.
The slopes are even worse. And they are too small. The average run is 300 meters!
The ski lift operator does not even hand the T-bars to the skiers. He sits in a chair and expects people to grab them.
Half of the T-bars are broken off within a couple of weeks of operation of the lifts and no one replaces them.
Half the time, only 1 of the 4 lifts are operated, because they lie to the skiers at the ski shop, telling them that it will open later, so that they buy the ticket, for the full cost, and they never open them.
On top of all these, they charge over 20 euros for 300 meters of slopes, even when only 1 of 4 lifts is open!
They bought canons a few years ago and they do not even use them.
Troodos ski resort could easily have been at least 3 times its current size with modern amenities, parking spaces, well maintained slopes, fast chair lifts and every facility that other European resorts have.
The problem is two fold.
The first is the Forest Authority and the Green Party. These are the cancer of Cyprus. They think by protecting two trees, they are serving the environment. Instead, they are creating a culture which grows up away from the environment. They cannot see the big picture. We could have taken 200 trees out from Troodos and planted 1000 elsewhere. But no, god forbid if Cyprus takes out a few trees. As if Cyprus is the number 1 enviromentally concious country in the world.
The other factor is the government which is manned with irresponsible, incapable and corrupted politicians.
They talk about winter tourism. How? Where? They do not even do the minimum. No amenities. The roads are death traps. The ski shop is 50 years old with no improvements. The slopes are 300 meters long. Which tourist is going to visit twice?
With the beautiful sunny winter weather, the Troodos resort could have been a top place for international competitions for skiing and snowboarding.
Imagine if they could create a snow park. Imagine if we had slopes of 1000 - 2000 meters (which could be made).
No dream, no vision, no effort, no responsibility, full corruption. In one word, Cyprus
2010-02-09