Larnaca announces Zenobia week

By Constantinos Psillides

Larnaca municipality and the town’s tourism board on Thursday announced the launch of a Zenobia Week, a wreck-diving tourism promotional campaign, scheduled between June 23 to June 30.

The campaign will focus on promoting the Zenobia shipwreck as a diving destination, through a series of events like an underwater photography competition, free tours of the wreck twice a day, an exhibition with memorabilia, and seminars on safe diving.

As a part of the Zenobia Week events, the municipality along with the Cyprus Marine Environment Protection Association is planning to clean the surrounding area from garbage.

Travel agents expressed their satisfaction for the promotional campaign, adding that the Cyprus Tourism Organization should do more to advertise Zenobia, “since it is one of the top ten shipwrecks in the world and the best in the Mediterranean.”

Zenobia was declared one of the ten best wreck diving sites by The Times, in a 2003 article titled “World’s best wreck diving.”
The Cyprus Diving Schools association noted that “there should be more promotion of diving tourism, since the Zenobia has so many advantages over other shipwrecks.

Visibility is excellent, water temperature is good all year long, and sea around the island is safe, the association said.
A Ro-Ro ferry launched in 1979, Zenobia sank off Larnaca in June 1980 on her maiden voyage.

There were no casualties but it has since claimed the lives of six divers, the latest being a 57-year-old Briton on March 13.

The vessel was loaded with 108 lorries, refrigeration units, toys, food as well as animals.

The cargo was estimated to worth around over €300 mil. There were also were also 140 passengers aboard.

Zenobia was halfway to Athens from the port of Heraklion, Crete, when it started listing to port, as a result of excess water being pumped into the ballast tanks.

The problem was thought to be have been corrected in Greece but it reoccurred when she reached Cyprus.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.