The cars, bikes, quads and trucks drove to the first bivouac where the first special stage will start on Sunday morning.

If they needed extra motivation to finish the entire rally, the collective show of affection spread along six kilometres gave the competitors a further reason to make it back to Buenos Aires.

The 362 riders, drivers and crews who made up the official list of starters on completion of scrutineering were nevertheless deprived of the company of Javier Pizzolito who suffered the first bad luck of the Dakar: the Argentinean amateur´s bike set fire before it had even left the restricted enclosure.

To avoid too early a start when the stop watches will be set running on Sunday, the organisers set up a first bivouac at Colon, near to the starting point of the special stage.

On Friday, a straightforward 317-kilometre link stage by road was all that was required. It was hardly a perilous exercise for these adventurers who will be getting to grips with a 9,000 metre loop, in which they will have to tackle the sand dunes in Chile´s Atacama Desert.

In Colon, many competitors are already asleep in their tents. The Dakar is underway.