The Panagia Evangelistria picnic site sits on the south-western edge of Xylofagou in the Larnaca district, next to the chapel that gives it its name, in flat low country just 19 m above the sea. It is a small local spot rather than a forest station — but it comes with one of the best stories in the region.
Tradition holds that a monastery stood here from the 13th century until it was destroyed in the raids of 1426; the monks managed to hide their Bible and an icon of the Virgin in a nearby cave, the Spileo tis Panagias. The icon stayed hidden until 1879, when a villager named Hatzias saw in a vision where it lay, dug in the cave with his brother, and found it — and when the icon "refused" to be moved to the village, a chapel was raised at the cave itself. Footprints in the rock are attributed by tradition to the Virgin, and the chapel — once called Panagia tou Syrmatou after the locality of Syrma — was renovated in 1980 and again in 2013.
The site also earns a place on a hiker's map: the E4 European long-distance path passes practically through it, making it an easy waypoint or starting point for a walk through the surrounding low country.