10th January – Bahia Inglses (round trip) Dakar 124 miles

We are here for a couple of days so breakfast and away.
The first viewpoint for the Dakar is just down the road about 15 miles or so. The road we are on the Dakar crosses 3 times and on arriving at te first we can either stay down by the road of some people have moved off the road a up the circuit. So we go up what looked like a road and it is sand and very deep sand in places. At one point my back wheel dug in and those who know how tall our bikes are, I was standing with about a 6 inch gat to my seat. We got there and there are lots of 4x4’s as you would expect but also quads, dirt bikes and sand buggy’s, most of which arnt registered by that doesn’t seem to be an issue here.
There is a lot of entertainment from those with suitable vehicles flying up the track and everywhere else, one chap decided the best vantage point was on the top of one of the peaks, so that’s where he went on his bike.
In the distance we can see a small dust cloud travelling across the desert in front of us, it is the leading bikes. Now the track that Martin and I traversed at 5 or 10 mph with trepidation they are coming up at 60-70mph bouncing around everywhere. 3 bikes come more or less together then a 10 minute gap, 1 more, then a 15 minute gap, another and gradually they become more frequent, cars, trucks aand quads as well. It is fantastic being so close and seeing a massive Tatra truck take off on a knarly bit.
We have crossed over now the cars and trucks are coming so that we are upwind of the dust and there is a ton of that.
Once we feel we are cooked enough we go on to the next stage and then decide to grab a bite and head for the bivouac near Copiaco. Its about 50 miles so we head for the tarmac.
We have been saying all day, ‘I wonder where you can buy Dakar merchandise’, in the UK there would be a vendor at every point available, well the answer is at the bivouac. Ther is one shop and you can but most things with Dakar on them.
We need to try to meet Simon Pavey as we hope to get into the secure part of the bivi where all the competitors are. Martin spots Simon and he has broken his rear subrame which has cost him about ½ an hour today. He obviously has to fix that, change the oil, tyres and have some dinner as well as grabbing some sleep, hopefully. We arrange to meet him tomorrow and if he has no dramas we may get in.
We continue wandering around the perimeter fence and are wearing our BMW suits, we are accosted several times for photos with various families, we don’t know if they like the look of us, think we are competetors or have mistaken us for Charley and Ewan. Martin said he feels like a filmstar wandering around.
It is now dark and competetors are still coming in, they must be shattered.
We then take off for our campsite which is 45 – 50 miles away, quite a challenge in the dark, but we are back safely.
It is now nearly 11 so we are not going to cook and we want Wifi, a stroll along the beach into town and we order 2 steaks with fries and 1 salad to share. We get a salad each on its own, no matter that can be a starter. After quite a wait we check on the steaks, no, sorry it will come, we then get a plate of fries each. No, where are the steaks, out comes the owner/manager who does speak and understand English, very sorry Ill do it now, so we eat the meal in instalments because the fries would have been cold had we waited. We are offered more fries or a salad on the house, we have another salad. So we ordered 2 steaks, 2 fries and 1 salad. We received 3 salads, 2 steaks and 2 fries, but all at different times.
I have downloaded another program to manage the photos and an experiment with about 4 works so I will try to do it daily with the blog now and we will catch up on some of the others as we go on.