Yesterday we collected our cars. They were in a large secure compound about an hour out of town. It was great to see Molly again.
All in one piece, just a little dusty and ready to go, or would have been if we had had some petrol :( think it must have evaporated ;) anyway managed to get to the nearest garage and fill her up and off we go onto the South America motorway system. Actually pretty good, the lanes all have different speed limits and a slowest speed limit. Every 5 or 6 miles there are speed traps.
We have all got our cars back to the hotel. Bit of drama in the underground car park with two cars needing some fairly major surgery and worse than that I lost my glasses. Found my glasses but one of the cars was still being worked on when we went to bed. Hope they can fix it.
Today we have to drive back out of the city to a car museum. We will leave the cars overnight and
start the rally from there tomorrow. Good idea as it means we should get out onto the open roads quite quickly.
start the rally from there tomorrow. Good idea as it means we should get out onto the open roads quite quickly.
We had our rally briefing last night. This rally is a lot more competitive than our previous one. There are 16 timed sections, quite a few around race circuits, think they could be quite fun :)
We were given our map books and times for each day. One section has an average speed of 40 Km
per hour. Cor that's a bit easy you foolishly say to yourself. One look at the map book and it shows the road is coming down from a ski resort! This gives you the idea that 40 will be quite fast enough. Thank you.
Sunday is a long day we need to drive for 11 hours covering some 630 Km on not particularly good roads. However it's not the longest day, that's towards the end of the rally.
We were also told that a LOT of the roads are gravel, not the smooth Tarmac roads I had viewed on Google. Some of the cars do not seem to have sump guards so that could prove interesting.
We have got great back up with mechanics, Dr and back office team dealing with the huge amount of paper work for border crossings etc. looks like we are in safe hands. We will do our best this time to try and not find out how good they are :)
The rally office has updated its website, there is now a results page, blog and photos. I can't see the photos on an Apple :(
The link is
Rally starts tomorrow. We are worse than a 10 year old on Christmas Eve :)
Cheers
David Harrison
01732 750449
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