The Dakar starts to bite. The terrain for today's 11th stage was very hard on the cars and their crews. Now, firmly in the second week of the race, attrition has become a fact of life for many of the competitors. The organisers, who are familiar with the ways of the Dakar, has taken this into account and the bivouacs have been getting steadily smaller as the race progressed.
It is hard to imagine a more desolate landscape than the one the teams traversed today. Barren and vast, the entire Atacama is inhospitable and unforgiving.
Giniel had a super day, finishing third for the day and moving up to fourth place overall. Duncan and Robbie got stuck when they avoided a stricken motorcyclist and in the ensuing mêlée they ended up travelling along the wrong valley, missing a way-point in the process. This dropped them back to 11th overall.
Lucio Alvarez pushed to the point where something had to give and when it became too much, he lost control of the Hilux and rolled it 5 times. Fortunately both driver and co-driver are unscathed an the Hilux kept running all the way back to the service park where it will be repaired.
Tomorrow's stage is a 600km push to Arequipa in Peru, mainly along the same type of punishing terrain as today.
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