We wake up at 4:30am to pass formalities on borders and to start on the first Mauritian special stage. But all efforts were vain, the stage was cancelled because of a sandy haze, the director's helicopter couldn't get off the ground. It seemed to us that it occurred because of serious delays on Mauritian border. Rally caravan started to pass formalities at about 9 am and even at 19 o'clock they were not over yet. In 2013 we also passed this border very slowly and painfully, but perfection knows no limits. Each participant of the race stayed not less than 4 hours in very long queue and as a result they left for memory to frontier guards fingerprints, having received in exchange the visa with the photo, probably, of the most ridiculous of all official. For someone the individual photo was turned into group photo, someone had on the photo a remarkable facial expression.
And here, at last, all boundary entertainments are behind. Very close to the border it is possible to see the longest train in the world transporting iron ore. Сonsist of train is 2 km. At the head of such trains there are 3-4 locomotives in order that they could conduct the train from 200 to 210 train carriages. Robert Amatych, the expert in railway transport, told that the usual length of train – about 70 carriages. In Mauritania passenger carriages are attached to freight trains, but passengers often prefer to go on roofs of carriages or even in cargo compartments. This year Nastya Nifontova was lucky to see such train, the show was impressive.
The bivouac without assistance cars looks unusually empty, the people communicate, Elisabet Jasinto came to speak to us, examined our trucks, remembered how Semen Semenovich invited her in "Silk Way Rally" to participate on KAMAZ truck, she said that it was almost a dream for her – excellent race on excellent car. The briefing with the announcement of tomorrow's SS and the announcement of start will be late today, organizers also lost a lot of time and Rene Metge doesn't manage to arrive to a bivouac in time.
Sports crews were on a bivouac at about 5 pm, and assistance cars by 7 pm didn't pass border yet, so our assistance cars will be on a bivouac at best at 10 pm. It’s not good. We hope that sandy haze would vanish; otherwise there is a danger of cancellation of tomorrow's stage.
