Day 3 a wow and phew day :)

Day 3 a wow and whew day.
Today was a long day. We had to drive from Cordoba to Mendoza  just over 600 km.
It was also the first day of the the real road tests. 
In the last (and only rally) we had done road sections as average speed trials. This means you drive from point A to B trying to maintain an average speed and arrive on the time the organisers have set for the course. Not fast and sometimes a bit boring because the time allowed was a bit slow but technical and puts all sized, aged cars on a level playing field.
We now know that's not the case for this rally.

You have a set time to start and a set time to finish but you go as fast as you can in between. If you arrive outside your given arrival time you get penalties and if you arrive inside your time you get a big pat on the back and no penalties.
Having bored you with the technical stuff we move on to the first test. A hill climb, we start driving quite sensibly ;) thinking it would not be hard. we have to do 6 km in 8 minutes. After a while Julie points out we now have 5 km to do in 4 minutes, oops, next comment is you have 2 km to do in 40 sec. In front is a learner driver group of young motorcyclists and another competitor. The bikers have now learnt some new hand signals and the other competitor should be talking to us by the end of the rally. We get a 2 minute penalty. Could have been a lot worse.

The 2nd test is an easy drive over to test 3, no drama no penalties. 
Test 3 we are told is know as a ' blat' meaning drive as fast as you can on a public, but deserted road, and have some fun. I am not used to driving over the national speed limit ;) 
but on this occasion we have a real good go.
It's an amazing piece of road all sweeping bends and only two short straight bits in 8 km. We do manage to keep Molly on the grey stuff and do what is know as ' clear' this section. Very very happy with that, not every crew manage it. 
Memo to self don't punch the air in hard topped car.
So that was part of the wow, but the real part of the wow is that this was all at about 4000 feet in the most stunning scenery. We carry on driving up till we reach 7300 feet. This is Condor land or sky, really looking forward to seeing one of these huge birds of prey. We have seen lots of Buzzards :)
We come down from the mountains and then have a very long very, very hot section through desert like terrain for about 400 km, this is the phew bit. It was about 39 degrees and mile after mile of flat empty countryside on arrow straight roads.

To make the journey more exciting Julie and I decided to count Goats, we got up to 2,397,578 and then would you believe it we lost count and had to go back and start again!
All the cars finished this real long, tiring, fun day. The mountains we climbed today are fractionally more than half the height of the ones to come ( that's about 13,000 feet).
The rally is now in full swing and great fun, especially today which is a rest day and seems to involve wine tasting against the clock :) Julie has been in strict training for this and is hopeful of a good result. Her carry home crew is on stand by :)
Tomorrow is Mendoza to Santiago 369 km.
One last thing we wondered why the insurance was so high for this event. Yesterday we started to understand. 3 mega crashes around us ( and other competitors) one involving a car and a lone lamp post, another a dust cart crushing a car it had not seen, and another where a driver seemed to be taking photos of an old car and drove straight into the back of the car in front.
Touch wood all the rally cars are scratch free and long may that be the case.
Off to the wine tasting :)




David Harrison
01732 750449