Raves and riots on Aphrodite's island

The British Army was using tear gas in Cyprus this week, but the British tourists prefer to deploy aftershave.

At night in Ayia Napa, crowds of teenage boys are armed with military-sized doses that could fell a man at 30 paces. "Ayia Napa, Ayia Napa, Ayia Napa!" sings one, as he roars over the cobbles on his moped in a cloud of Hugo Boss. "We're lovin' it, lovin' it, lovin' - ow!" Passers-by turn to look, then fall about laughing, as he crashes headlong into a wall.

He is one of the less serious, but more typical, casualties of the British occupation of Cyprus. Seventy miles east along the coast, 30 or so policemen are nursing their injuries after a violent night of protests at the UK army base, but here in the tourist resort it is business as usual.

Cypriots may have been torching cars and hurling petrol bombs at British servicemen 24 hours earlier, but you wouldn't know it from the scenes in Ayia Napa. Once a sleepy fishing village, it is now the Med's latest 24-hour party zone.

More than 100,000 young tourists are expected in Ayia Napa this season, some from the Continent, but most from Britain, and the night after the army base violence, not one I meet has heard about the trouble. By midnight, thousands of youngsters mob the old square in the heart of the town, where the apricot- coloured ramparts of an ancient monastery are blinded out by the neon signs of night clubs announcing London DJs - the Dreem Teem, Mike Ruffcut Lloyd, Matt Jam Lamont.

House and garage blasts out of every club doorway, curdling with the roar of mopeds and horns, and the pavements are a scrum of sequined miniskirts, strapless tops and high heels. This is Cyprus, but the overall impression is of a vast and unruly convention of Top Shop, modelled by boys and girls who look like S Club Seven's baby brothers and sisters. "Riots?" blinks a blonde in a fluffy pink bikini top. "What, here? In Cyprus? Naah. You're just winding me up."

The nightlife is concentrated along half a dozen streets radiating out from the monastery, and the neon signs tell the story of the resort's recent conversion from traditional tourist resort to UK clubbers' paradise.

The old-style package holiday names are still here: Shagwells, Scandinavian Loveshack, Hollywood Boulevard, and every other building is a fast-food bar, such as For Cod Sake - Traditional Fish and Chips. Kebab and chips do a roaring trade. But the invasion of London speed garage has transformed the clubs, and young British bar workers weaving through the crowds are handing out flyers for nights more familiar from Time Out: Ministry of Sound, So Solid Crew, Garage Nation, Twice As Nice. Entry to the clubs here is only £5 to £10 - a fraction of the prices on the other party island of Ibiza - which explains in part the resort's massive popularity.

Tourist-board statistics put the average age of visitors at under 25, but here in the square most look under 21, and many under 18. Schoolgirl legs go on forever, tottering along in unsteady packs, not so much drunk as capsized by stilettos on cobble stones, and so the girls hold hands to keep each other upright, listing across the pavements like sparkly daisy chains.

Everything they wear is shiny. Some clutch roses in Cellophane, handbags hooked over their shoulders, and several carry teddy bears tucked under their arm. With glitter on their cheeks, and strands of silver tinsel woven into their ponytails, some resemble Christmas decorations.

If anything, the boys are even younger - something that is a source of endless complaint to the girls.

"They're so immature!" wailed a pair done out in St Trinian's schoolgirl gear.

A gang of 11 lads have come out dressed in the England football strip, and look like the national under-16 side. In the hot night air, other boys strip down to jeans and bare chests, and swarm around the pavement stalls where locals paint on temporary tattoos for a couple of quid. One teenager carefully spells out the words he wants inked onto his skinny white back: Gillingham FC Til I Die. The tattooist has a small transistor radio on his stall, playing traditional Greek music, but it is drowned out in the deafening throb of speed garage from passing cars.

The Ministry of Sound hosts a night in the Castle Club, three arenas of garage in a venue just off the square that looks like a gigantic sand castle, and it is rammed solid. The tourists inside the clubs are slightly older than the hordes eating kebabs on the cobbles outside, and the Ministry crowd are good looking and good natured. Karl "Tuff Enough" Brown plays Tina Moore, Never Let You Go, and the main dance floor erupts.

"Rewind! Rewind!" But here the other big difference between Ayia Napa and Ibiza - and London - quickly becomes apparent: there aren't any drugs.

The British may be doing their best to turn Cyprus into the new party island, but the Cypriots are equally determined that their country won't become another Ibiza, and the drug laws are strict and vigorously enforced. There is no caution for first offenders; prison sentences work out at roughly one month per Ecstasy tablet, and the authorities have already confiscated 400 since April. That's four times the number seized during the whole of last year. The policy is certainly working.

"Nightmare. Absolute nightmare," rants a girl in the toilets at Garage Nation. Her friend nods, looking disgusted. "We've been here three nights now, and haven't found a thing. What a waste of time." So will they be coming back? They double up in mock hysterics. "You are joking, ain't you?" This will come as music to the ears of tourist bosses and police officials, some of whom are appalled at this latest British invasion of the island, and want a return to the families and older couples who would go to bed at midnight. "You see them?" demanded the elderly concierge at the hotel, as I stumbled in at dawn. "You see? Pigs! They are pigs. They drink, they piss, they fight, they have no respect. Always the loud music! They are worse than animals. We do not need these people here."

But in the main, Cypriots appear indulgent of their new visitors, and most of the clubbers seem surprisingly happy with the island's laws.

Despite the steady stream of pushing and shoving - "F*** off!"? "Just leave it, Vic!"? "You calling me a moose?" - the atmosphere is still cheerfully innocent, closer to a teen disco in Leicester Square than the free-for-all bedlam of resorts such as Benidorm or San Antonio.

"I know someone from London who got beaten up by the police this year," a boy handing out club flyers admits. "I've been coming for four years now, and that's a first. But then, that's good, you know? It means they're strict, and people can't get away with whatever." The bouncers - muscle-bound, crop- haired, olive-skinned - eye the revellers warily, but staff in the bars and shops and kebab stands are supremely polite and solicitous towards the invaders. Watching them smile all night long, and offering courteous greetings in flawless English, it is hard to imagine that their countrymen were hurling chunks of concrete at British policemen.

What do they think of the tourists here? "Crazy!" they all smile. "But good." In the square, teenage Cypriot boys in tight white T-shirts with hair slicked back sit along the ramparts and benches, staring in slack-jawed wonder at the British girls as they teeter by. They are quieter than the tourists, content to sit and watch, although as dawn approaches the wisdom of this strategy begins to pay off. When the British boys are staggering home in circles, faces covered in ketchup, the local lads are still standing, and pick their moment to make a move. The girls are like baby foals now, all legs and gravity, and fall happily into their arms.

By the following afternoon, the temperature has climbed into the 90s, and the town is dazed with heat. The square is empty and immaculate, the trampled flyers and broken bottles all gone, but the beach is thronged.

"Yeah," everyone agrees, melting under umbrellas in the shade. "Cyprus is wicked like that. Really clean, really nice. Lovely people."

Wednesday's British papers have arrived now, and there is general amazement among tourists at news of the attacks along the coast. If the British are surprised, though, the Cypriots are embarrassed, and the island's own papers are full of condemnation. But there is also uneasy resentment in the press towards the bases, and some calls for work on the controversial radio masts to be postponed. "Arrogant British attitudes" is a phrase that crops up several times. I do not find one Cypriot in Ayia Napa who approves of the violence, but meet several, particularly older men, who complain darkly about the British still stealing parts of their country.

I show a newspaper to a London club promoter, here for the summer, and he reads it and shrugs. "But that's Cyprus," he says, as if he is referring to a foreign country. "And this is Ayia Napa." In fact, the army base is British territory, and this is Cyprus, but tourists here could be forgive for confusing the two.