Dec29 Photos around the Scrutineering area

More Dec 28 photos at pickup ....

Dec 28 photos - race car and support car pickup

What started off as an easy day...

(by Glenna)
Tom, Conor and Troy left at 6 am to pick up the trucks and take them to the village. I stayed back to sort out communications and other details (the very glamorous job of getting the laundry done).

At noon I ran into Conor on the street. The alternator was dead so they had returned to the hotel to pick up the space. After Troy drove some competitors to the village, he parked the car in the underground at the hotel. Since I was to return it to the rental place he went to get it. An hour later we were still waiting for him as he only had to drive around the block we thought he must have been in an accident. It turns out the delay was just traffic. Pedestrians have no regard for stop signs. Red means go and so does green. On the 8 lane roads there are no lines ... why waste the paint? When there are lines no one pays attention.

A long day to the port ...

After 5 hours we made it the "100 kms" to the port.

Conor, Troy and Tom left the hotel at 1230 to walk "5" blocks and pick up the rental car. Two and a half hours later they showed up at the hotel. The rental place was 55 blocks away...

Glenna stayed at the hotel to find directions. 3 hotel staff tried to find the location - we tried google maps. Finally a tourist mentioned she knew where it was a suburb of BA - the equivalent of Kingston being a suburb of Toronto. We set of with at least an idea of what city we were heading to ha ha.

Once we go to Zapata we stopped at a taxi stand. It took three of us to interpret the directions from the taxi driver (no one here speaks any English). With these sketchy directions we headed off. Luckily when we hit the highway we started to see Dakar vehicles heading toward us on the other side of the highway. We reverse followed them to the port another 30 km.

Finally we arrived just after 5. Only two people could get into the closed port so Tom and Conor headed in to see how the trucks faired on the stormy trip across the ocean.

Tomorrow we will be back here at 8 am to pick up the trucks and install the safety equipment. From there it will be off to scrutineering.

On the way to France

It's official ... now Blood, Sweat and Tears, have been shed !
Friday we packed up the Dakar vehicles, the race truck and support truck, ( David, one of our shippers, conked himself on the Sea Container inspection lamp, causing a small gash, on his head, which bled profusely ), but apart from the accident, it was a big success. Although David was feeling much better after a few minutes, his co-workers insisted that he go to the hospital anyway, just to be sure. At one point, we were not sure that the vehicles would fit, but after removing the rear fenders, and hood, ( which both had significant overhang ), we got everything packed up nicely with 2" to spare on either side of the race truck. I had to climb out the window on both vehicles, as the container was too tight to allow the doors to open. One step closer to the start line !
New years day is day one of the race ... I can't wait !