End of the first day

Don Hatton finished 69^th today, the first day of competition in the Dakar 2010 Rally in Argentina, up from his 74^th starting position.

Yesterday was the ceremonial start to the rally in Buenos Aires with a relatively short transit to the inland city of Colon. Don arrived late to the bivouac due to the extremely heavy traffic and after grabbing a less than spectacular dinner (2 chunks of meat and a sausage) he was off to prepare for the next days competition.

Due to his early start time, he had to be at the start line at 5:00 AM, Don retired to his tent to prepare the next days route book and get some sleep as he had to be up at 4:00 AM !

Today’s stage one of the race consisted of a transit stage of 317 km, the special of 219 km, followed by another transit stage of 84 km for a total of 652 km for the day. A transit or connection stage is how the competitor gets from the bivouac to the start of the competition stage known as the special. These are held on public roads with all the hazards of riding a motorcycle in Argentina !!

The special today was mainly good gravel conditions, slightly damp due to the recent heavy rains in the area. Temperatures here are in the low 30 C. Excellent riding conditions and Don has not reported any issues

Dakar Racing Factoid – things you might not know or thought of :

As part of your entrance cost to the Dakar the organizers provided basic meals, bivouac services (shower, toilet, medical personal, etc) along with most of your fuel. But due to the global nature of the event some of the services might not be up to what we would expect for this caliber of event. A constant complaint from most of the privateer participants is the food. It varies greatly in quality and quantities. It has been referred as “poor at best, horrible at worst”

For more information and photos check out http://www.destinationdakar.ca