11th January – Bahia Inglses (round trip) Dakar 93 miles

Off to watch the Dakar again today, they are doing a loop around Copiapo and the viewing stages are similar to yesterday. We go on to the third area todat to see a different section, here the trucks and cars finish when they get to the checkpoint by the road but the bikes and quads go on and do another section.
We enquire at the checkpoint about Simon and he hasn’t been through yet. Today we park our bikes by the roadand walk in because with the weight we are carrying our bikes are quite unmanageable in the sand, looking at the way some of these guys manage perhaps a bit more experience would help.
The vehicles come up a ridge and then dive down diagonally over this steep slope sliding sideways as they progress down. Some of the lorrys come straight down, I guess rather than chancing overturning when traversing diagonally, it is hugely impressive and some just keep their foot in all the way.
Whilst we are there various spectator bikes and cars are attempting to go straight up some of these hills, one wothy of mention is a guy on a street bike with normal tyres who attempts to go straight up and does very well until he hits a big dip which throws him up in the air and slightly off to the side, everyone thought he was off but he somehow recovered it and turned and came back down. We went and spoke to him and his friend said he was not skilful just mad, he took off across the sand at speeds of about 70 mph, just shows that half of it is confidence or stupidity.
Still no Simon but we venture off towards the bivouac and go to see the mine where the miners were trappedfor three months. The mine is now closed down but we cannot get beyond a barrier about 100 of so feet from the entrance, a few photos and we continue on.
The road we are on has a varied surface from rough tarmac to a ripio finish and then as we wind around the mountains sand has blown across and in some cases is quite deep. The descent to the bivouac is spectacular with views right down the valley.
We arrive at the bivi and go to check on Simon, he apparently had an engine problem between checkpoint 1 and CP2. We tried to get info from race control but security is so tight we are not allowed in but finally an organiser went to check for us and Si is 40k out not moving at the moment. If he can fix it and get back he is still in but if he is rescued then thats it. We certainly didn’t bring him any luck.
Nothing more we can do here so back to base camp for us. When we get back there are 4 18 old guys from Santiago camping camped next to us and they introduce themselves and are really outgoing and friendly, so more photos and then Martin and I go off for dinner and meet an English guy called Simon who now lives in Peru and owns a restaurant there. He gives us some info and then we retire.