My day out with the Cyprus STi Club - Part 1 Last year, for reasons I won't go into here, I bought a local tuner magazine. Wooed by the flashy images, I was curious to see what the local car scene had to offer. But I had a teensy problem with it; the whole thing was in Greek. Anyway, it had pictures in it, and it gave me a bit of a clue (hint; there's quite a bit of rice on the streets here). But one page caught my eye while I was leafing through it, the Clubs list page. And right there in the middle was Subaru (it wasn't in alphabetical order, or at least not by any alphabet I'm familiar with). Cool, there are other enthusiasts here. But I was still busy settling in, so I filed the number away for later. Fast forward to about 3 months ago, and I decided it was time to give them a call. After chatting with the club president and the local chapter rep, they said they'd be in touch when an event or gathering was arranged. Things went quiet until last Wednesday, when out of the blue the local guy called me to tell me they were having an 'excursion' on Sunday, and would I like to come ? Well, after a very small amount of spousal haggling, I signed me and Quinn up. A couple of day later, I got word of the itinerary, which would involve a trip up to Kykkos Monastery, then back to Pedoulas for a spot of lunch. OK, sounds good so far, some cool scenery and a good nosh. So, Sunday morning rolled around, and Quinn and I got to the car park meeting point right on time. I was a bit disappointed to find only three other cars there, but since this is Cyprus, I just assumed everybody else was late. As it happens, only one other car was late. So our little 5 car caravan set of from Limassol, and headed up the road into the Troodos mountains. However, it is hard to be truly disappointed when the caravan consisted of a White RA-R, a Black RB320, a pair of WRB Hawkeye STi, and my old school Type-RA. Now, back when I first got in touch with these guys, I was under the assumption that it was a general Subaru club much like MNSubaru. After talking to them when we met up, it turned out this is actually an STi club. I thought that was a bit mean to the non-turbo/non-Impreza crowd, but soon figured out why you need to have at least a WRX to join in as we were hurtling up the mountain doing at least a tonne. Thank heavens the police don't work on Sundays round here As it happens, the route up to the monastery started out to be one I was familiar with, so keeping up was no big deal, but it did mean a few brave/foolish overtaking moves on some very twisty roads, since there was some slower traffic. Let's be honest, *all* the traffic that we came up on was slower than we were. But, as twisty as these roads were, they were still considered main roads, and not nearly as twisty as we were going to see. We went up over the mountains and down the other side, slightly bypassing the summit. After we'd gone by a couple of small towns, we went past the signpost for the monastery. 'Odd,' methinks, but I decided it was prudent to keep following the leader. About 500m down the road, we pulled into a petrol station which was swarming with other Subarus. As it turns out, this is where the Limassol chapter were meeting up with the Nicosia chapter, so now we had 15 cars. Yeah, it's no La Crosse cruise, but it was better than the handful of us that'd started out together that morning. And this is the point at which I turned into a total carnography obsessed tourist. This group had some very tasty machinery. Besides the aforementioned RA-R and RB320, there were more 'plain' JDM STi, along with a couple of Spec-C Type RA, a couple of GC Type-R, and a *second* white RA-R. Holy carp, a brace of RA-R in one place ! Can the universe stand this much awesomeness ? The rest of the cars were a little harder to be specific about with such a limited amount of time to look for the small giveaway details, but suffice to say, everything had a turbo and a fat exhaust pipe. We waited around for a few minutes for a couple of stragglers to arrive, then by some sort of consensus, it was suddenly time to fire the engines back up, and be on our way. That much rumblez all at once was like experiencing a small earthquake. I'm not sure if the club has an established pecking order, but the line to leave the petrol station seemed to be quite orderly, and not at all like most of the traffic jams I have experience of here. Unfortunately, there was a bit of traffic as we left, and our little group got separated. A couple of miles down the road, it became apparent that our leader didn't actually know where he was going, and we had to turn around, go back the way we came, and catch up to the main group, who had kindly pulled over to wait for us. Now that the whole group was back together, we set off in earnest for the monastery... 2x RA-R An RB320 parked in front of my Type-RA WRB Type-R, White RA-R and WRB Spec-C Type RA A bunch of Old School cool And the Fanciest Body Kit of the Day Award goes to... Drool, slurp... In case there's any doubt... (Part 2 to follow.)
I always enjoy seeing the pictures of Cyprus's beautiful scenery. Since I'm kind of a n00b I had to look up what some of these are. Thanks!
My day out with the Cyprus STi Club - Part 2 At this point, the whole group was back together, having turned off the main road, and headed out into the countryside on secondary roads. The most surprising thing about the roads we were on was just how good they were. The roads in town tend to be horrible, with potholes the size of swimming pools, and lumps and bumps that a decent sized rhinoceros could hide behind. And these aren't new roads; they're ex-donkey trails (no, I'm not kidding) that were tarmaced over years ago. I suppose they don't get much heavy traffic, so they don't break up like the city roads do. They're also not being dug up every few months for the latest public works project. Anyway, I was glad that the roads were in good shape, as my car inherited my old AutoX suspension, which has some pretty heavy springs on it. So, the suspension was able to get a good workout without causing too many bruises. To begin with, the roads meandered casually among the foothills, and are best described as 'swoopy'. Gentle slopes up and down, sweeping corners, and fairly open country. Strangely enough, some of the roads were seeming very familiar to me, and it turns out that our route involved a lot of the roads I'd been on while attending the Friday & Saturday stages at last year's WRC rally. Some parts were new, though, as we were able this time to go on sections that had been closed off last time I was out there. I got a good laugh again at the big signpost with an arrow pointing down a track to the 'Secret Eoka Hideout'. If you don't know the history, Eoka were the local freedom fighters/patriots/terrorists (depends on whose side you were on, and which period you're looking at) in the 50's and 60's. By this time, we were climbing up into the more mountainous area, and the road quickly went from swooping through the countryside to clinging to the mountainside. Gone were the sweeping corners and gentle dips and rises. The road was now climbing relatively steeply, and the contours of the hillsides made the road quite twisty. But this didn't really slow the line of cars down very much at all. Then we turned off this road onto an even steeper and, believe it or not, twistier road. This one was so steep as it climbed up the mountain that it had genuine proper 180* switchbacks that were sharp enough to lift a rear wheel on as we went around them. After we'd gone up 4 or 5 of these, the road went back to clinging tenaciously to the mountainside, with rocky cliffs rising up on one side, and sheer drops falling away on the other. Small earthquakes are common here, and while we don't feel most of them, they do shake small rocks loose, so we had to be on the lookout for big rocks in the road. There was also a fair bit of gravel on some corners, no doubt caused by some of these rocks being broken down by passing traffic. The sandstone and limestone are quite soft, after all. With no other traffic on this road, the line seemed to take that as a cue to really open the taps, which made the drive along this strip of road very much like a 15km AutoX course. The straight sections were barely discernable, with turns coming one on top of another in a relentless chain of left/right/left/right corners swinging us from one side to another in our seats. While I was OK, Quinn's bum doesn't yet fill the base of a racing seat, so he was constantly bracing himself against the door or center console. Poor kid Sadly, I wasn't in any position to enjoy much of the scenery along this road, or take pictures of it, as it was taking a lot of concentration just to stay on the black stuff. Fortunately, since I was last in line, I didn't need to worry about being hit from behind, but it was certainly a possibility for those in front, with most of them braking hard into the corners and powering out for all they were worth, only to have to stomp the brakes again for the next corner. The cruise had essentially turned into a group hillclimb, and the cars were definitely working hard. My oil temperature was up around 95C, although I was glad to see that the water temperature gauge was sitting rock steady at about 2/5 of the way up, which is where it seems to have settled into since I installed the oil cooler. I was very surprised to see that our speeds weren't actually that fast. The few times I was able to look at the speedo, we were doing between 30-45mph. Much like an AutoX run, the speeds feel faster because of how tight the turns are. All of a sudden, the road seemed to smooth out again as we approached the crest, although at this point, I had no idea how close we were to our destination. At this time, my intercooler spray light came on to let me know that it was low on water. Wow, I'd filled it to the brim before we set off, and here it was already nearly empty. I think it holds about 2.5L, so it must have been spraying like crazy. Then the queue of cars slowed down and bunched up again for one of those tight switchbacks, and lo and behold, as we came around the hillside, we were at the monastery. Now, you may have it in your head by now that the Kykkos Monastery is just another ruin, much like the other antiquities here in Cyprus. But it's not; it's a full on working monastery, complete with monks in robes. And it's an impressive place. For a quick potted history, please take a minute to look at this link... http://www.mlahanas.de/Cyprus/Geo/KykkosMonastery.html. If you click the 'Hybrid' button on the map, it shows the road that we followed in a yellow line. The one we were on is the one to the right, which is south and east of the monastery. See how wiggly it is ? We parked the cars up in a line along the side of the road, and got out to stretch our legs a bit. From where I was parked, it was hard to see much of the monastery itself, since it was obscured by trees. But we could take a minute to look out over the scenery, and it was pretty spectacular. The hillside fell steeply down away from the car park, and we could see down into the valley below and across to more hills spreading away into the distance. We made our way down the road on foot, and just around the corner, there was the main building of the monastery. Considering how old the monastery is, this building looks to be well kept and maintained, and I would imagine it gets regular upgrades. I was also amazed at how many people there were. The majority of our group seemed to have an idea of where they were going, so Quinn and I trotted along behind. At the door, there was a chap giving out purple robes. It may sound quaint, but these are modesty robes, and are given out to anyone with offensive messages on their shirts, anyone wearing shorts, and women wearing shirts that don't cover their shoulders. Me and Quinn were OK, but some of our group had to wear a robe. The other thing that grabs you as walk in through the front door is the frescoes. The walls and ceiling are totally adorned with them. And most of the walls that don't have frescoes have mosaics on them instead. This really is a beautiful building. Just inside is a large courtyard, with monks' quarters and offices around part of it, and the museum off to one end. Across the courtyard was a set of steps that led down to another smaller courtyard. Again, most of the rooms surrounding this second courtyard seemed to be cloisters or accommodations, but the main chapel was through an unremarkable wooden door off to one side. There was also a shop selling mostly booze, crosses and religious icons. It seemed to be doing a roaring trade with the tourists. Inside the chapel itself is a spectacular example of what church wealth can buy; amazing paintings and frescoes, gold candelabras and crosses etc. Sadly, it is forbidden to take photos in here, so you'll just have to take my word for how impressive this place is. While in here, it became apparent that this is also a place of pilgrimage. Most (if not all) of our group went up to a wall filled with icons, kissing particular ones in turn. I can only assume that these icons represent various saints, and that people kiss those icons of the saints who have particular significance to them. (Note to self, add a footnote to explain the notion of 'Name Days'.) Quinn, being Quinn, wanted to join in with ‘kissing the pictures’, so I had to explain to him that this is something special to these people, but it is not a belief system we share. Of course, he wanted to light a prayer candle as well, still with no idea of the significance of these rituals. I managed to shepherd him around the chapel, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at all the shiny things, and then headed back out to the courtyard to meet up with the rest of the group. Apparently, that was the extent of the visit to the monastery, as they all went back outside for an ice cream before saddling up again to head off for lunch. It would seem that we will be making our own way back there some other time to take a look at the museum. And it probably won’t be on a Sunday. A couple of the cars went their own way, and the rest of us set off in convoy to head back down the mountain for lunch. A first look at the Kykkos Monastery The public entrance to the monastery The large courtyard The small courtyard. The chapel is on the opposite side. (Part 3 to follow.)
This reads like a "What did you do during Summer vacation?" essay. Did you have much of a problem communicating with the other drivers? You need one of those GoPro camera dealies for the next run.
My day out with the Cyprus STi Club - Part 3 Our procession of cars made a very sedate, if somewhat noisy exit from the monastery, since the roads around it have some fairly serious sleeping policemen on them. Once the lead car had gone a respectful distance down the road, though, it was business as usual as we made our way back down the mountain. The first part of the trip was obviously down the same road we’d come up on, but when we got back to the t-junction we’d joined it at, we went straight on. This was a new road to me, since the time I’d been down here last year, that entire section of road had been cordoned off. Suffice to say, this road was more of the twisties that we’d been on a lot already. But this time we had a couple of little bridges that were apparently there to make up for bits of mountain that were too steep to perch a strip of tarmac on. But this turned out to be the most interesting stretch of road on the whole trip, as I was to discover a couple of miles later. All of a sudden, we were on a stretch that was *very* familiar to me. We were whipping down what was part of SS3 during the WRC rally last year (which is the first of the stages I had gone out to), and we went right by the spot I was spectating from. How cool is that ? I find myself inspired now to work out the routes the rally cars followed on Day 1 last year and retrace their tyre tracks I don’t fancy following the gravel stages, since I don’t have the tyres of suspension for it, but the tarmac ones should be fun. Before too long we arrived at the formerly sleepy village of Pedoulas. The roads through these small mountain villages are very tight, and made even tighter since cars have to park on them. A couple of times Quinn asked me if the road was one or two way, and he found it hard to believe that it was indeed a two way street. I expected that we’d have trouble staying together along here, but it would seem that a giant snake of burbling rally cars is quite a spectacle, and every car coming the other way yielded to our passing. Part way through the village, we made a sharp turn that took us almost back on ourselves, and which headed steeply downwards onto an even tinier road. And yes, this still wasn’t a one way system. We didn’t get too far down here before traffic came to a halt. Unbeknownst to me, we had arrived, and just out of sight, around the corner, there were some fun parking games going on. While a few people went further down the road to park, most stayed right around or outside the restaurant. Since the GCs are physically smaller than the GD cars, we wound up with rock star parking right next to the restaurant, albeit donkey style parking under a tree. (Note to self, write a footnote to explain the concept of ‘donkey parking’.) The restaurant was really quite small, but it became apparent that we’d booked ahead. Quinn and I found seats close to our group, since we knew that at least some of them spoke English. (While English language skills tend to be quite common among the locals in coastal towns, it is less common in the capital city of Nicosia. This kind of echoes the demographics, since most British expats retire to the coast, and that’s also where most of the tourists flock to.) As our group leader was collecting everyone’s money to pay, I asked what we would be having. He shrugged his shoulders and replied, “Lunch.†So, not much of a clue there then. While we waited for our mystery meal to arrive, I took a few minutes to teach Quinn the basics of taking pictures with our camera. He was quite excited about that. As a matter of courtesy, I asked if anyone would mind us taking pictures, and I was told it would be OK. They looked a bit confused as to why I’d bothered asking. When I explained that one never knows if somebody is there with his girlfriend instead of his wife, that got a good laugh. Apparently, everybody that day was with who they were supposed to be with, so it wasn’t a problem. The food soon started to arrive, and it was good. The best bit turned out to be some *really* good kleftiko. These days it tends to be lamb, but traditionally it was also sheep or goat. It is herbed and then cooked in a charcoal oven for a few hours. The meat is so tender, it just falls off the bone, and it is absolutely delicious. The method of cooking actually originated with livestock thieves who would steal an animal, cut it up, and then bury it with smouldering coals. This way, if anyone came by, there would be no visible evidence that anything untoward was going on. These days, many restaurants tend to cook up a batch of it once a week, and reheat it all week long as needs be. It is *always* better fresh, and this was very fresh. It’s one of those things that when you find a place that does it well, you’ll keep going back time and again. Along with the kleftiko we had dolmides (vine leaves stuffed with rice and meat) and macaroni pie (the local version of macaroni cheese, although it’s nothing like any macaroni cheese you’re ever going to see in the US). We had roast potatoes, and the obligatory salad and village bread as accompaniments, and everybody tucked in. It was fairly obvious that most of this group already knew each other pretty well, and I must admit to feeling a bit out of place. In my time here I really haven’t needed to learn Greek (embarrassing, I know, but it is what it is), but Quinn has been learning it at school for the last couple of years. While being far from fluent, he can at least say hello, tell people his name, let them know how old he is and talk about where we’re from. It may not seem much, but the locals really do love kids, and this is enough to immediately endear him to them, so he gets lots of hugs, kisses and cheek pinchings. Especially from old ladies. When he’s run out of Greek, he just switches back to English, caring little if his audience understands or not. Oh to be a carefree kid again, huh ? Anyway, back to me, I did have a bit of a chat with a couple of people, but spent most of my time in quiet contemplation soaking up the surroundings. Dessert was simply a few big plates of cherries passed around amongst us. But they were amazing big, plump, juicy cherries, absolutely bursting with flavour. Mmmm, I’m drooling again just thinking about them. With lunch eaten, I let Quinn loose with the camera. There were some other kids there, so he spent a lot of time taking pictures of them, and generally bossing them about. The bossing about had fairly mixed results, but he seemed to be having fun. After my lunch had settled for a while, I snagged the camera back and went for a wander up and down the street to snap a few pics of my own. A lot of the rest of the group were doing the same thing, and despite the language barrier, we were able to point at cars we liked and grunt appreciatively. Greek or English didn’t seem to matter, since we all spoke Subarese When it was time to head off, it turned out that most of them were going to stop off again for a coffee in Kakopetria (men here take their frappuccinos *very* seriously), but since it was a school night, we had to bale and head for home. It turned out that the RB320 was heading home, too, so I was going to follow him. With surprisingly little drama, we got all the cars unparked and on their way. Everybody stayed together to begin with, then little groups started to peel off depending on where they were going. Ultimately, Quinn and I found ourselves alone, chasing an RB320 along a mostly deserted stretch of wiggly mountain road. And the RB320 driver was a bit of a lunatic. During this leg of the trip I had to explain to Quinn that this kind of hooligan-esque behaviour on public streets was not big and not clever, and that I was setting a very bad example for him by participating in such juvenile antics. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Yeah, but it’s fun, isn’t it ?†I can see we’re going to have trouble with this one. Just occasionally we’d come up behind another car, which we’d have to slow down for until we could find an overtaking spot that was relatively OK, such as only-slightly-blind corners. Quinn quickly dubbed this ‘Hooligan Time’, and he actually started to like catching other cars so we’d have to go through the whole rigmarole again. To be honest, we were pushing harder on this stretch of road than we had on any bit thus far. The guy in the RB320 actually lost the back end a bit on one corner. I’m glad to report that I had no such problems myself. Eventually, we came to another bit of road that I recognised, so we no longer needed to follow our guide, but I had no way to tell him. Once we joined back up with the main road, we got stuck behind a couple of cars, but at a steep bit, Mr RB320 was able to blast past. I wasn’t so lucky as traffic started coming the other way. By the time I got past, my guide was out of sight. I did catch up with him a couple of miles up the road, as he was kind enough to wait for us to make sure we made the proper turn at the 5-way crossroads. As soon as we caught up, he was off like a prom dress, much to Quinn’s delight, although by this time he had started to complain about starting to feel a bit car sick. Bless him, he’d managed to go all day, and was only now feeling a bit green. As I was thinking that we should probably start to slow down a bit, the RB320 pulled over. Horror of horrors, it had started to overheat. They assured me they’d be OK, so Quinn and I made our way home at a more sedate pace, with me having a smug grin on my face because the cooling mods I’d done to the car over the last few months obviously did their job. And that’s where we run out of interesting things to say, other than it was an absolute blast, and I’d totally do it again in a heartbeat.
It turns out that posts have a 10,000 character limit, so the pictures for Part 3 needed their own post. Sorry to ramble on, but writing it down helps to cement the experience in my head, and it's fun for me to think through it all again. Believe it or not, this village road is *not* one way That's the restaurant at the top of the street We had two tables in the restaurant Side roads make handy car parks Donkey parking (there's also an old BMW parked in front of me) I think this was the kids' favourite (Footnotes to follow.)
Wow, awesome write-up and great pics! Now, to figure out how to save some money for a trip out there...
Footnotes Name Days The Orthodox Church is very big here. And, of course, the Church has massive resources at its disposal. They have also had, for many many years, good ways to tell the time and the passing of the years. This is important, since they have days to mark many of the saints, such as St. George, St. Peter etc. However, being a predominantly agrarian society until half way through the last century, many people had no way to know what the date was, which left many people not knowing the date of their own birth. But, since most people (if not all) born here are named after saints, they could use the saint's day to mark their age. While not their actual birthday, it at least allowed people to know how old they were. Thus, name days here are at least as important as birthdays. Donkey Parking OK, this is a funny thing that foreign observers comment upon, but most locals don't even realise they're doing. Cars weren't very common here on the island until about 50 or so years ago. Buses were the main mode of mechanised transportation, and the donkey was a popular mode of personal transportation. Now, it gets hot here, and if you want your donkey to be happy while you're not riding him, you tie him to a shady tree. If you were outside a shop, there may be other donkeys also tethered to that same tree. So, you wind up with a circle of donkeys essentially parked in a circle under a tree. And they still do that with cars. Many car parks here are just unused pieces of land. Many of these will have a tree or two just growing in one part or another. And, as with the donkeys, you will often see cars parked in a circle under a tree. Admittedly, it does help keep the interior of the car slightly cooler, but that makes it no less funny to see. Background Pictures The following pictures were taken last year during the Cyprus Rally. I believe I've posted them before, but I think they're worth putting in again here since they help show some of what I've described here but was unable to photograph for fear of becoming rapidly dead by not concentrating on what I was doing. Oh, and I am totally putting a GoPro HD in my letter to Santa this year. This part of SS3 of the WRC Cyprus Rally last year was open for driving on this year This is mostly how the surrounding scenery looks up here in the mountains Little villages cling to the hillsides, or nestle into the valleys OK, I think I'm done rambling now. Thanks for actually reading this far, and I'm sorry if I put some of you to sleep :biggrin: Stuart.
Awesome pics and good writeup. Love hearing about different cultures and how they do things. The donkey parking is quite funny, I think they do that in Texas too.
Wow that is an epic adventure. I am very jealous. I would love to see some of those cars in person not to mentions a chance to follow them up some mountain roads. I expect more stories and pictures in the future!!!
