By Christine Pirovolakis, dpa
Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa)
05/30/2006
Kavala, Greece (dpa) - While not as harrowing or as deadly as the Paris-Dakar rally where competitors have to to battle sandstorms, landmines and bandits - 60 car enthusiasts have set off from London and will make their way across eastern Europe before heading to the Middle East.
This year, 30 vintage cars, jeeps and sports cars signed up for the JNF rally that began May 14 in London and cut a winding path through France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Liechtenstein, Austria, Hungary, Serbia and Montenegro, Macedonia, Greece and Turkey before reaching Israel at the end of the month.
The rally which has lured drivers for a decade covers nearly 4,000 kilometres and involves automobiles as old as a 1926 Rolls Royce and as new as a 2006 Porsche and Mazarotti.
"We cannot really be considered a quick rally but more a historical one," said rally organiser Martin Hone.
Starting off in the port of Dover, drivers have already ploughed a trail through nine countries - passing by Lake Geneva before climbing the lower slopes of the Alps and the mountainous peeks of Macedonia before winding their way along the northern shores of the Aegean to the Greek town of Kavala.
With almost two weeks on the road, many of the drivers have suffered a number of setbacks from broken speedometers to faulty fuel-gadgets.
Initially starting off in a 2005 Renault Megane, duo Ashley Bernstein and Michael Irving arrived at the historical Imaret in Kavala in a rental car after their automobile broke down in the mountains just outside of Skopje.
"We realised we had a problem when we arrived in Skopje and we ended up getting ourselves down the mountain in neutral and with no breaks ... needless to say we are lucky we are still here," said Irving.
Driving their 1963 Ginetta, David Gutenberg said that he and his wife Louise were driving without a speedometer and were using a bamboo shoot to check for gas after their fuel gadgets broke down somewhere at the early start of the rally.
In this year's race drivers will cross the border from Greece into Turkey and will be following the plains running alongside the Sea of Marmara to Istanbul.
Due to security reasons, organisers took the precaution of transporting rally cars with a cargo carrier to Tel Aviv from Istanbul rather than make the journey through Lebanon and Syria.
"Because the race is organised by the Jewish National Fund we thought it best to bypass several countries as a precaution," said Hone.
The rally will continue along the northern borders of Israel before slaloming down south to the Dead Sea, through the craters and mountains of the Negev Desert into Jerusalem.
Copyright 2006 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
http://www.cjp.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=184483
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