Just Covering the Event is a Grueling Test of Man and Machine.
The scene was surreal. Pitch dark and pouring rain, and we were trying to sleep in a Volkswagen Touareg. The last thing we wanted to do was go outside and put up our tents, where all we could see were the lights on vehicles parked nearby and the flashlights used by the local gun-toting military police. What's more, they had our passports and we couldn't move until dawn.
No wonder I woke up after a couple hours of fitful sleep, dreaming I'd just stumbled into North Korea. The reality was we were parked on the border between Western Sahara and Mauritania, deep in north Africa. It was well past midnight, and we'd just driven across a rocky 60 miles of desert from Morocco--all of it rough going with only our GPS and a few rock cairns to guide us.
The organizers of the Dakar Rally warned us we'd be allowed to cross the border only at one opening during the first few hours of daylight. It's a disputed area, and there are old minefields everywhere, so this was the only safe place to make our way over.
At daybreak, the police returned our passports. We crossed the gap in the fence and went on our way. This was supposed to be one of the driest spots on earth, but after the previous night's rain, we were dealing with rivers of mud. Regular Dakar competitors told us it had been over a decade since they'd last seen rain here.
True, the racers have the most exhilarating time, but everyone from the food providers (there are 82) to the 525 competitors has one goal in mind--to make it to the city of Dakar. Even spectators and journalists get in on the act--which is how I came to be driving one of three modified Touaregs with seven other journalists for 15 days. We drove from Lisbon to Dakar, a distance of more than 4000 miles.
One of the great attractions about rallies and long-distance off-road racing is that everyone ends up a participant rather than just an onlooker. It's especially true of the Dakar rally, as the support crews have to follow the event each day to keep up with the competitors. So do the TV crews, the caterers, the medical teams, and the journalists--more than 2000 people in all.
Each day, 20 planes carry 200 folks from one bivouac to the next. That leaves another 1200 or so who have to drive trucks and SUVs. Most of the time they take a shorter route. It might not be as tough, but often it's not that different, as we discovered when we spent six hours traversing 300 miles of desert tracks from Morocco to Mauritania.