26-Mar-2009
It's with tears that our adventure finished today, a difficult marathon for all the teams but so many beautiful memories of splendid landscapes, women and children who have crossed our way. Time went by so quickly, days of more than 15 hours and it seemed so short. Although I was sick today I had fun in the dunes with my "pick-up truck", an unforgettable feeling, waltzing and flying over the peaks. Yesterday evening we slept outdoor at checkpoint #3 with 10 crews... Wine and rum around a campfire! This morning we had our first flat tire, not bad compared to the other teams... but they did not have YOKOHAMA tires!

This evening we will celebrate at the bivouac, it's the end of the race and we are proud of what we've accomplished. Tomorrow we have an 8 hour drive to Essaouira, on the beach for the closing ceremonies. This is the last time we send you an update from the rally, thank you for your support and your messages, you were all with us and we greatly appreciated the small emails we received from you. We will share with you pictures and memories as soon as we will be back. A special thank you to my boyfriend who took care of the updates on our website...

SHOUKRAN... Pictures...

24-Mar-2009
The first marathon stage; two beautiful days where we started aggressively and then we transformed into tourists... we drove around to finally meet Émilie and Josée; a team from Québec with whom we spent the night camping in the middle of the desert. The number of stars in the sky was just amazing and the sun rising over the sand dunes unforgettable...

Day 2 of the marathon stage, it was the day where we forgot... we forgot so many things... almost lost our second Breton plotter... we lost the other one earlier. Navigating without this is like having a car without a steering wheel, not that great. And then we were like tourist again, we drove around and we know we were right beside CP9 (check point) but we couldn't find it. We had to stop searching, we were running low on fuel so we decided to go back to the base camp to take a shower and start preparing for the second marathon leg where we will be sleeping alone in the middle of the desert again. Time goes by very quickly, the race is almost over. We will remember this race forever and will have a lot to share with you... Pictures...

22-Mar-2009
Our truck is in perfect condition, we are not injured; only our ego is affected. As much as we were proud of yesterday, today our morale is at its lowest point of the race.  We had difficulty with the navigation... so we drove around for at least an hour on the most difficult course, we got stuck for about 45 minutes shoveling sand on a hot day! After we got out of the "sandbox" we decided to try a little less extreme course but when we got to the course we found several girls were stuck and it was now about midday.  For those of you that have never been to the desert, to attack the dunes after midday is a bad idea and especially to go alone... The only another option was the regular course which is a 6 hour drive for only 60 points... so we decided to return to the bivouac (base camp) to take a shower and reenergize for tomorrow's leg; the first portion of a marathon leg. We need to do well tomorrow to compensate for today and make some points to improve in the standing but today could have been a lot worse... One of the teams had a serious accident and others have seriously damaged their vehicle and will probably not be able to continue the race. In spite of our bad day we saw the fabulous dunes of Merzouga and some wild camels. The landscape was splendid...

22-Mar-2009
Correction... I will blame it on my lack of sleep... today is not the first of two marathon legs, today is what is considered the most difficult leg of the race... like we need this... You will probably see several pictures of Geneviève and I shovelling the sand of the beautiful dunes of Merzouga. If we do not get lost or like the French teams say, if we don't "tank" I will give you an update at the end of the day.

21-Mar-2009
Today was much better, we got 5 CP (check point) and we are quite happy. We missed CP6, we drove around during more than 2 hours and never found it... Unfortunately that meant we had to drive back in the dark with the only tool we have... the compass. Not an easy task. We just arrived and it's 11h30pm... we go to bed right away because tomorrow is the first of two marathon legs... We will not return to the bivouac (base camp) tomorrow evening, we will sleep in the desert for the first time. Pictures...

20-Mar-2009
Julie and Geneviève, from Team 172, are well and alive and living in the moroccan desert! After coming back to the bivouac at midnight during the night of Wednesday to Thursday (during the prologue), they managed to touch four markers out of six today (Thursday) in the first stage. They're totally happy with their performance. Geneviève tells about Wednesday night : "We got stuck in the sand at nightfall. Two Gazelles came over to help us but they also got stuck. Finally, the organization took us back to the bivouac. We're among the ten teams who came back to the bivouac at midnight", she says.

19-Mar-2009
Julie Lévesque and Geneviève Bachand, from Team 172, were still in the desert at 10:00 P.M. The Gazelles might have decided to stop and spend the night in the desert, failing of finding their way in the darkness. They were probably waiting for the first light of dawn tomorrow to come back to the bivouac and be ready for the start of the first stage.

24-Feb-2009 Team Photo

23-Feb-2009 Gazelles Promotional Poster

9-Feb-2009 Official Press Release