Gstaad Transafricans: Days 5-9, Nador to Foum El Hassan-Smara, Morocco

As we follow the Gstaad Automobile Club in their trek across the Sahara desert we are now able to bring you the first images from the early African stages of the Transafricaine Paris-Dakar Classic Rally. The photos above are taken from Stanislas de Sadeleer's Nokia N95 Lifeblog photo unit, and they show a slice of both the scenary and kind of living he and Vincent Janssens have been experiencing over the past days. The other star of the show, of course, is their 1994 Land Rover Discovery I, which was expertly prepared by Hansueli Brand and the team at Ledi Garage in Feutersoey, and which so far has been running without a hitch. In conversations with GstaadLife.com, de Sadeleer expressed great satisfaction with how the race has gone so far, and there was genuine excitement in his voice as he described a highly successful day 8 when they placed 2nd after hundreds of kilometers of desert sands and stones. There were a few navigational issues in the dunes of central Morocco, and they did miss a couple of the required GPS waypoints (once by just 200 meters, but you try going back 200 meters in deep sand!), but it turns out that virtually every competitor did the same thing so these errors were eradicated from the overall standings, leaving Team Gstaad in 9th place overall. The only cloud for the participants was the news of the serious injuries to the drivers of car 119, with Bernard Duc and Stéphane Valéry airlifted to hospital in Agadir Morocco and then onto Marseilles France after rolling their Range Rover. We wish them both a speedy recovery.

Click on the screen below to watch video highlights of the stage 6 in the Sahara dunes from Erfoud to Tagounite, Morocco:

• Click here to view and buy official race photos of de Sadeleer and Janssens
• Where are Stan and Vincent right now? Click here to track their car by satellite on a moving map (enter car 240 in the box #1).
• For the latest rankings, click here (they are up to 9th place at the time of writing)

Team Gstaad Automobile Club is sponsored in part by ING Private Banking.