Blog Posts

Gazelle Rally Day 3: Gearing up for driving lessons – in sand dunes

Turns out, lots of experience driving in snow doesn't mean much when driving in sand

Can you handle a 14-hour drive? How about a 14-hour drive through the desert, with next-to-nothing in the way of technology – just paper maps, geographic coordinates and your co-driver? That’s exactly what Driving’s Lorraine Sommerfeld and her sister, Gillian, will be doing over the next two weeks competing in this year’s Gazelle Rally. Follow along here for updates – we’ll try and keep you updated, but WiFi might be a little scarce in the Sahara.

Day 3: Prologue.

Tomorrow is prologue, like the testing ground before the main event. That means a driving lesson in the sand dunes. They may look all soft and foldy, but trust me, they grab at your tires like a drowning man grasping for the last life preserver. I have lots of snow experience, but very little sand.

That was proven today.

Our instructor, Christophe Delacour – like every great instructor – was patient, kind and rarely let me see him raise his eyebrows. Or sigh. Or shake his head. The truck I’m driving for this rally, a new-ish Toyota Land Cruiser Prado, is automatic. Christophe’s truck is a much older version, and manual. He made me work with his truck.

But first, to the tires. Upon leaving the pavement, out we scooted to drop my tire pressure. Normal inflation is 2.0 bars, or 29 psi. For the dunes, we dropped it to 1.5 bars (21.7 psi) for what Christophe considers “normal desert.” I consider it “terrifying desert”, but I’m sure I’ll learn when we’ll be dropping our tires to between 0.8 and 1 bars, or 11.6 to 14.5 psi. We’ll be encountering towering dunes that will see our tires go as low as 0.4 bars. The heat does crazy things to tires, so I brought three tire gauges with me. Customs was a blast.

A local man stopped to watch the fun. I automatically put the valve stem cap in my mouth – it’s the only way not to lose it, if you ask me. It tastes like you think it tastes. The local looked at me quizzically, but I ignored the judgement. I had dunes to climb.

Gilly and I are in briefings and training all day, every day. Teams have been arriving from all over, and everywhere is a sea of pink vests. The rally is a huge deal here in Morocco, and the interest from tourists and locals alike never gets old.

Yesterday was sticker day  – making sure the trucks are sporting all the decals. The Gazelle organization has their official signage on every rig, but night falls here with a thud; we never got our own stickering finished yesterday. Today, after drive lessons all morning and navigation sessions all afternoon, we finally got to scrambling all over a black truck in the hot sun.

Shady spots go quick in these climes. You have about a 20 minute window that is decent to work on the delicate work of applying stickers without the wind whipping up the sand and the sun melting you. The stickers took two hours. Pictures tomorrow!