Desert Challenge Blog

Our Nissan XTerra - home for the week
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Phill Tromans
31 October 2008

Tuesday, 28 October

7am
Well, here we are. After a 350km drive down from Dubai I arrived at the Bivouac on the Liwa Oasis at about 10pm last night. We’re way down in the south of the UAE, not too far from the Saudi border.

I set my tent up next to the stickered-up Nissan Xterra I drove here in last night, and awoke early today to get a proper look at the camp.

It’s quite a place – set under the huge sand dune at Tal Morheeb, it’s a jungle of tents, portacabins, cars, trucks and bikes in the middle of nowhere.

It’s an impressive operation, although one that is currently hindered by a complete lack of running water, which has already turned the toilet block into a place best avoided and has meant no shower for me this morning.

The next problem has been that I seem to be missing a vital wristband from my press kit – the wristband that gets me food. Hopefully that will be resolved this morning, or I may have to eat the Xterra’s spare tyre.

Still, the cars are now all roaring off on Special Stage 2. Hopefully when they return in around three hours, I’ll be more nourished than I am now.

11.52am
Not much going on here at the moment. The first bikes and cars should have started arriving back the the camp some time ago, but there's no sign of them yet and no one seems to know why.

Some quad bikers are passing the time by attempting to blast up the massive sand dune that overlooks the camp.

On the plus side, I found that despite the lack of water for washing and showering earlier (now thankfully fixed), there is a swimming pool set up at the camp. Nice!

2.53pm
Finally, some action. After a long wait, the first few bikes began to appear. A lot of them seemed rather confused about where the end of the stage was and we were treated to the sight of them zooming about in all directions in the distance.

Some time later, the first car finally arrived, at least a couple of hours after it was expected. Apparently the bikes had been delayed in setting off by an hour, which threw everything out.

(continued on next page)

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