Welcome to Dakar 2004/01/17 January 17 I slept in and missed my flight from Nouakchott where I was staying, but somehow got to Dakar. Dakar is an unexpectedly large city and has a different atmosphere to the other towns in the Sahara that we have passed through so far. Many Nissan people have come to Dakar from Europe and Japan to see the Nissan Rally Raid Team finish. We took a leisurely lunch at an elegant beachside restaurant in Dakar (no more eating on carpets spread out on the ground), then split up into four charter buses to drove the 40 kilometers to the finish line and welcome the Team to their goal. To allow the passage of the race participants, the local police closed the road to normal traffic, and we stood on both sides to wait for the Team's arrival. There were large numbers of Nissan people, clutching small flags. The first Nissan vehicle to come in was a T5 Patrol service truck, and its occupants, quickly engulfed by the welcoming Nissan contingent, appeared surprised at their warm reception. The next Nissan vehicle to appear was a T6 camion truck. After the camion, Nissan pickup No. 208 driven by Giniel de Villiers and navigator Francois Jordaan was supposed to come along, but what actually appeared was a pickup with a front end damaged almost beyond recognition. The Nissan people called out in dismay, thinking something had happened to de Villiers but it was actually Ari Vatanen, who had already retired, driving No. 205. The service crew wanted to move it, so it was driven to Dakar for sending on to Paris. Then suddenly Nissan pickup No. 208 arrived and the crowd was immediately in an uproar, surrounding and mobbing its occupants. The Nissan Rally Raid Team must have been really happy to receive such a warm welcome. After that, we moved on to Lac Rose (Pink Lake). The waters of Lac Rose appear pink because of microbes living on the lakebed. It's probably something like the red tide phenomenon in the sea. The lake is ten times saltier than seawater, and the locals come here to harvest salt. The final Dakar Rally stage starts here at Lac Rose and follows the beach to the Meridian Hotel in Dakar itself. We decided to explore the course around the lake in a four-wheel-drive truck. This was my first experience in this Dakar of driving offroad in a 4WD vehicle. At first we had rough terrain, but at the end sand and dunes. I now feel I understand a little of what it's like to drive across desert and sand dunes. In the desert, there is great resistance to your driving, and if you don't know what you are doing, you can get mired down. Rather than driving in a car over land, it's more like handling a boat in the water. We decided to go up a small dune, but the truck got stuck and wouldn't go up. The driver got down and tried many times to get us out, but each time the truck retreated further down the dune, and we weren't even halfway up. He tried to let some air out of the front tires but it didn't work. Then he tried letting air out of the rear tires but to no effect. How to get over the sand dune? At a standstill, we wondered if we would ever get back to civilization. But we didn't need to worry. Kenjiro Shinozuka, a former Dakar Rally winner, was on board. The people riding with us in the truck all called out to him: "Shino! Shino!" It was his nickname. I now wanted to see how Shinozuka got up a sand dune. He got down off the tray of the truck and into the driver's seat, engaged first gear, and we were suddenly over the dune. And when we got back to civilization, the sun was going down over Lac Rose. If you are going on a trip into the desert, I recommend taking along someone who has won a Dakar Rally. In actual fact, before Shinozuka agreed to drive up the dune, the driver had let more air out of the front tires and that was why we got up it. Back