Things to do on the water in Ayia Napa and Protaras

The sea in Ayia Napa and Protaras is sold in five different ways, and a day out costs anywhere from €30 to €460 depending on what you are actually buying. A seat on the deck of a four-hour cruise is €30 per adult. Fifteen minutes on a jet ski is €50 per machine. A parasailing flight is €60. The first hour of a self-drive boat is €80 for the hull. A try dive is €80 per person, and a full Open Water Diver course is €460. Below is a map of that market: who leaves from where, when the season opens and closes, from what age children are taken and what to settle before you pay.

• The entry price in each of the five categories and the unit the operator prints it in
• Ayia Napa harbour, Protaras, Pernera, Kalamies and Konnos Bay: who goes out from where
• A season from April to October — and three operators who draw the edges differently
• Age thresholds: ten years, twelve, eighteen and twenty-one
• Deposits, fuel and cancellation rules: six questions to ask before paying

What do people do at sea in Ayia Napa and Protaras, and what does a day cost?

The five categories differ not only in price but in the unit that price is counted in, and here the unit matters more than the figure. Cruises and diving are counted per person. Parasailing is counted per flight, and one, two or three people go up in a single flight. A jet ski is counted per machine, with one or two riders on it. A self-drive boat is counted per hull and per hour. That is why €50 and €80 in the table below are not neighbouring figures but money of different kinds.

The cheapest way to start is from a deck. The four-hour Chill-Out Cruise with Medusa Cruises costs €30 per adult without lunch and €40 with lunch and a drink, while a child under twelve is €20 and €30 respectively. That is the lowest published cruise price in either town.

The dearest cruise in the line is the Ocean Queen day tour at €50 per adult. That figure carries a caveat the operator makes itself: it is the starting low-season price on a normal deck. Neither the VIP deck with its jacuzzi nor the child fare is printed anywhere — the booking form shows them once you pick a date.

A comparison of all five categories, with the arithmetic for a group, is in the article "What a day on the water costs in Ayia Napa and Protaras". It also works out what a hull price becomes once it is divided by capacity.

Where the boats leave from: Ayia Napa harbour, Protaras, Pernera and Kalamies

The geography here is simple, and it explains half the timetable. The big cruise boats lie in Ayia Napa harbour, which locals call Limanaki. CYCRUISES puts it in one line: every trip leaves from Ayia Napa harbour.

From that quay sails the pirate ship The Black Pearl — a three-level vessel with sword fights and cannons, €45 per adult for four hours with a 10:30 departure. CYCRUISES sells its tickets too, and the hull is visible from the whole promenade.

Protaras counts its quays differently, and here one operator contradicts itself. The header of the Medusa Cruises site reads Golden Coast Harbour, Protaras. On the page of the three-hour cruise the same operator writes that it sails from Pernera Harbor on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10:15. And the company's Google listing sits at Protaras Harbour. Three addresses for one company is reason enough to confirm the quay in writing before you pay.

The small craft and the beach stations have one address each — the beach. Baywatch Watersports works from Kalamies in Pernera: jet ski rental off the sand, the guided safari and parasailing all leave from there. XS & Stephanos Watersports stands on Sunrise Beach in Protaras with parasailing and eight boats, available daily from 09:00 to 19:00. Mike's Watersports is based in Konnos Bay between the two towns, and the self-drive boats go out from there.

Cape Greco is not a port in this geography but a destination. Cruise boats make their swim stop at the Blue Lagoon, the guided jet ski safari rounds the cape within the hour and stops to swim as well, and the dive centres work the shore of the national park. The cape has no quay of its own: you arrive by sea or by road.

The dive centres are split between the two towns. Ocean View Diving sits in Ayia Napa itself, on Kasalou street, and collects guests free of charge within a ten-kilometre radius. Undersea World is in Ayia Napa too, on Kriou Nerou. Easy Divers, Poseidon and AquaNaut are in Protaras, about ten kilometres along the coast. That distance is billed: Easy Divers includes pick-up from Protaras, Pernera and Kapparis in the price and charges €5 extra for a guest staying in Ayia Napa.

The season: April to October, and where the operators disagree

The general answer is April to October. That is how the destination's own season is marked, and that is exactly how CYCRUISES prints it: "Sailing season April to October", with the dates of each trip to be checked on its own page. But at the edges of that window the operators part ways, and the difference matters to anyone travelling in March, April or November.

Santa Napa Chill & Relax costs €35 per adult and sails on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 10:30 to 14:30; its 2026 schedule opens on 31 March. Lunch is already in the ticket, and the child fare is twenty euro for a child aged two to twelve.

Divers count the longest season of all. Easy Divers writes that diving in Cyprus is available year-round, but names April to November as the sweet spot: water averaging 25 °C and visibility of up to forty metres. The same centre names the peak separately — June to September — and asks for advance bookings in those months. Poseidon Dive Centre draws a harder line: the season in Protaras runs from mid-April to the end of the first week of November. The two versions differ by nearly a month at each end.

Inside the season the timetable belongs to the individual boat, not to the resort. The Scubacat sunset cruise sails only on Tuesdays and Fridays, 15:00 to 18:30, while the morning departure of the same catamaran runs daily from 9:00 to 13:30. The operator warns separately that departure times shift with the month and the weather and asks guests to check them in the booking tab the day before.

The month-by-month breakdown of weather, water and crowds is in the article "When to go to Ayia Napa and Protaras: month by month". It also explains why late October here is not the same thing as early October.

Cruises out of the harbour: six departures and how they differ

Six cruise boats work the same stretch of coast — the sea caves, Cape Greco, the Blue Lagoon and Konnos Bay, where the turtles are. What separates them is not the route but what happens on deck and what is in the ticket.

The quietest hull in a loud harbour is Santa Napa: four hours, two swim stops and a run east to the viewpoint over the Famagusta ghost town. Chicken lunch with Cypriot potatoes, salad and tzatziki is already in the ticket.

The loudest is The Black Pearl: sword fights, cannons and animators, €45 per adult and €25 per child aged two to twelve. The operator describes this boat as a family cruise and tells anyone after a quiet day to look at other ships.

The Scubacat catamaran sells two different halves of the day. The morning departure is €45 per adult and €25 per child aged two to ten, with infants under two free; the Cypriot barbecue is cooked on deck while guests swim. Masks are free to use but against a twenty-euro cash deposit — card is not accepted for it.

And the four-hour Medusa departure out of Protaras is the only one where €30 per adult buys the trip without lunch, while with lunch and a drink the same trip is forty euro. The company gives free cancellation up to 24 hours before departure, which is a rare line on this coast.

What exactly each ticket covers and what is paid for on board is set out in the article "An Ayia Napa harbour boat trip: what the price includes and what it does not".

Diving: the try dive, the two-dive day and the course

Diving here is counted in days and programmes rather than in dives, and five centres hold five different price lists. The spread is wider than it looks: the same words "try dive" cost anywhere from eighty to a hundred and ten euro, and those sums cover different things.

The cheapest first dive is with Easy Divers: a try dive at Green Bay is €80 per person, and into that sum the centre puts VAT, local transfers, tanks and weights, and hands over unedited photographs free of charge. Edited photos and video cost fifteen euro a head, and a further dive after the programme costs seventy.

The same centre sells a longer day: the MUSAN Try Scuba package is €150 per person for a training dive at Green Bay plus a dive in the underwater sculpture museum, minimum two people. The museum itself — ninety-three figures by Jason deCaires Taylor at about ten metres — is free to enter, and what you pay for is the dive centre; that is the subject of the article "The MUSAN underwater museum".

The dearest try dive belongs to Undersea World: a first dive at Green Bay there is €110 per person. The MUSAN version at the same centre is a hundred and forty euro, and both dives in one day are a hundred and ninety. What the base sum covers is not spelled out on that line.

For certified divers a two-dive day costs the same at two centres and slightly more at a third: Ocean View Diving and Undersea World hold a hundred, while Poseidon is a hundred and five. The contents differ: Ocean View includes full gear and charges ninety with your own kit; Undersea World prices gear separately at thirty euro a day; Poseidon dives from the shore along the Cape Greco national park with full gear in the price.

The dearest line on this coast is training. The Open Water Diver course at the AquaNaut school on Green Bay beach is €460 per person. The school has stood on that beach since 1989 and calls itself the only dive school in the Protaras area located directly on the water, so training starts a few steps from the building with no drive and no boat. What the sum covers is not itemised, so materials, the certification fee and equipment are worth confirming in writing.

Jet skis, parasailing and a boat without a skipper

These are the three categories where the price is never counted per person, and this is where budgets go wrong most often. A jet ski is counted per machine, parasailing per flight, a boat per hull and per hour.

Jet ski rental at Kalamies is €50 per machine for fifteen minutes, €60 for twenty and €90 for thirty. The operator spells out the arithmetic for a group itself: two machines for fifteen minutes are €100, four are €200, and four machines for half an hour are €360. A second rider on the same machine is not charged separately, and a single booking takes up to four jet skis.

The guided safari uses the same unit: €150 per machine with one rider and €200 with two on the same machine — the second passenger adds fifty euro. The safari needs at least two machines to run, so the smallest booking the operator quotes is three hundred euro, and four machines is the ceiling. The hour includes rounding Cape Greco and a swim stop at the Blue Lagoon.

Both stations count parasailing per flight and charge the same for a single take-off: €60 for one and €80 for two. They part on the third person — €100 at Baywatch on Kalamies and €105 at XS & Stephanos on Sunrise Beach. Two people flying together pay eighty euro between them rather than sixty each, and that is exactly what the unit "per flight" means.

A boat without a skipper is counted per hull. The eight boats of XS & Stephanos start at €80 for the first hour for the five-seat 100hp Jaroma and run to €240 for the nine-seat Four Winns; each additional hour is cheaper than the first, from sixty euro. No licence is needed: the operator writes that under Cyprus law anyone aged eighteen or over can rent, with a briefing and basic training before departure.

Mike's Watersports in Konnos Bay counts its fleet the same way. The glass-bottom boat for six is €100 an hour and €350 for a full day, while the Yellow Regal for eight is €170 an hour and €700 for a day. Fuel is included in this operator's prices, and it repeats that on every boat in the fleet.

Why a jet ski in Cyprus is priced per machine, and what local law says about licences and the declaration, is set out in the article "Jet ski in Cyprus: licence, declaration and the price per machine".

With children and for beginners: from what age they take you

There are four age thresholds here and they do not line up across categories. Diving starts at ten or twelve, driving a jet ski or a speedboat at eighteen, and one operator's glass-bottom boat at twenty-one. On cruise boats age does not decide admission but the fare.

A first dive is available earlier than most people expect. The Poseidon try dive in Protaras is €85 per person, and on the same price list, at the same figure, sits the Bubble Maker, the programme for eight- and nine-year-olds. No certification is needed for a try dive at any centre on this coast.

Easy Divers sets a higher threshold and words it more precisely: the try dive is from twelve, and for ten- and eleven-year-olds the centre runs a separate programme in very shallow water and asks families to write directly. A medical questionnaire is filled in on site, the centre advises against diving while pregnant, and it asks for at least twenty-four hours between a dive and a flight.

On the cruise boats children are counted in years, and the fares differ. The Black Pearl charges €45 per adult and €25 per child aged two to twelve and carries infants free. The morning Scubacat is €45 per adult and €25 per child aged two to ten, with under-twos free but bookable only at the ticket office or by phone. And the sunset departure of the same catamaran takes no children at all: €35 per person from twelve years up, with no child fare on that trip.

Parasailing is the one category where neither station names an age. Baywatch describes the flight as suitable for everyone and states only one condition: the beach team may change who flies together, based on individual and combined weights. XS & Stephanos prints neither an age nor a weight limit and says only that it flies more than three thousand guests a season.

What to ask before you pay

Six questions close almost every gap between the listing and the bill in these two towns.

The first is the unit. Cruises and diving are counted per person; nothing else is. A flight at Sunrise Beach is €60 for one and €105 for three, so the third participant adds less to the price than the first. A jet ski is counted per machine and a boat per hull, and dividing those sums across a group only makes sense within the capacity the operator printed itself.

The second is the deposit. XS & Stephanos prints it on the card of every boat: twenty euro an hour on the smaller hulls, thirty in the middle of the range and fifty on the two luxury boats. What the operator does not print is what the deposit covers and when it comes back; that is worth asking, along with whether it is taken in cash. Mike's Watersports publishes no deposit at all for any of its boats, and its absence from the page is better not read as its absence at the base.

The third is what is included. Mike's puts fuel in the price and writes so on every hull. Easy Divers has already folded VAT, local transfers, tanks and weights into its figure. At Ocean View Diving a two-dive day at €100 includes full gear, and hotel pick-up within ten kilometres is free; from three divers up the centre gives a discount. On Ocean Queen drinks are not in the ticket.

The fourth is cancellation, and this coast is not uniform. Medusa Cruises gives free cancellation up to 24 hours before departure. CYCRUISES offers a refundable rate at booking and a free date change on every rate. Scubacat contradicts itself: the booking terms say a paid ticket is not refunded and the date may be changed no later than 24 hours ahead, while elsewhere the site advertises free cancellation within the same 24 hours — both versions are worth settling by email before you pay. Ocean Queen gives no refunds at all, but refunds in full or reschedules if it cancels for weather.

The fifth is weather. CYCRUISES puts "weather permitting" on every route line it publishes, and the swim stops on every boat are an intention rather than a promise. The sixth is your flight: you cannot dive and fly on the same day, and Easy Divers asks for at least twenty-four hours between the dive and take-off.