After planning out the route, preparation for Dakar 2012 is continuing with the compilation of the road-book, the competitors’ bible that they have to follow to the letter. The work is complete for two thirds of the stages, with the one at Fiambala rhyming with mishaps for the reconnaissance team…
The route from Mar del Plata to Lima, imagined by the Dakar organising team for the 2012 edition, will be taking the competitors on a journey of almost 9,000 kilometres, with a programme that now needs to be detailed step-by-step. Accompanied by a handful of experts in all sorts of tracks and desert terrains, David Castera spent most of September in Argentina and Chile. For this second series of reconnoitring, the challenge involved putting the route down on paper that all the vehicles will take in the month of January. Kilometre after kilometre, the pages of road-book are being filled up, denoting the crossing of a dried river bed, a change of direction, the presence of a hole accompanied by a level of danger, etc. On conclusion of these three weeks of wandering, ten stages have received on-the-ground validation and the sketches, once finalised, are ready to send for printing.
Whilst the riders and drivers of the Dakar are already used to struggling in the white dunes of Fiambala, the reconnoitring convey has already suffered due to the ruggedness of the region’s terrain: three days were necessary to write up the 5th stage of the rally. The mission was clear for Jean-Pierre Fontenay, a two-time winner of the event, now reconverted to driving one of the three reconnaissance vehicles. To produce a road-book that is reliable and faithful to the actual racing conditions, he had to get as near as possible to the rhythm at which the leaders progress, even if it meant putting the robustness of the Amarok he has been entrusted with to the test. Even without stopwatch pressure, it only needed one small mishap to end up losing a lot of time! After grinding to a halt, the time it took to transport the spare parts for repairs from Cordoba then the work necessary to get the vehicle back on the road cost this small band of adventurers a full day. As regards Chile, the Atacama Desert held other surprises in store for the expedition. In addition to the difference in temperatures (35°C at the hottest part of the day and 3°C when they settled down into their sleeping bags!), the Dakar reconnaissance team arrived in Arica shortly after a day that will go down in history. The torrential rain that fell on the region brought an end to a one-hundred year drought. As a result the team had to make their way through a transformed landscape. They were also amongst the lucky people able to take several photos of the Atacama covered in flowers and grass; a prairie in the middle of the desert…
