Back at the hotel in Dakar, after a good night's rest, at 6 o'clock the next morning, the Grandmaster and Fang Zhengying were fully armed and ready to start today, the longest stage of the seven stages of the Cape Town Rally. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

Vladivostok – The sixth stage of the Cape Town Rally runs from Dakar in Senegal, West Africa, to the coastal town of Angoche, Mozambique, South Africa.

This stage is from the northwest corner of Africa to the southeast corner of Africa, diagonally across the whole of Africa. With a straight-line distance of more than 7,500 kilometres, it is the longest stage of the entire rally.

However, the real distance of this stage is much more than this straight distance.

As we all know, the central part of Africa stretches from west to east, from the east coast of the Atlantic Ocean to the interior, passing through Gabon, Congo, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), until reaching the west of the Great Rift Valley, which is one of the three major tropical rainforest areas on the planet.

Although Africa is a continent of drought and little rainfall, it is all because of the impression created by the famous Sahara Desert and many grasslands, in fact, in the middle of Africa, there is still a large area of tropical rainforest.

And from Dakar to Angoche, if you want to follow the shortest straight line, you have to cross the rainforest.

Crossing the rainforest is not such a wonderful thing, and according to the Grandmaster, he would rather spend a few more days in the desert and three days in a snow nest in Siberia than even a minute in the rainforest.

When he was in the infinite world, the Grandmaster had carried out missions in the rainforest many times, so he couldn't be more familiar with the rainforest, and for the Grandmaster, the rainforest was really terrifying.

In fact, many veteran drivers who have participated in the Vladivostok-Cape Town Rally many times would rather go around thousands of kilometers than drive through the rainforest when running the sixth stage, unless there are special circumstances.

Although there are roads in these countries with tropical rainforests, and the roads are all in the rainforests, if you really want to take these roads, then you are really fooled.

Africa is the world of the black brothers, and no money is their biggest characteristic.

The tropical rainforest is the most severe environment for roads and buildings, and it is not impossible to open up roads in the tropical rainforest, but your follow-up maintenance must keep up, otherwise your road will be repaired, and it will not take a few months to find where the road is.

Those crazy rainforest plants only need two or three months to cover all the roads that have been carved out.

And with the financial resources of the black brothers, how can they support such maintenance?

So, although there are clear road markings on GPS or satellite maps, if you actually follow the road markings on the map, you will find that you are in bad luck.

Take the Congo (DRC), the country with the largest area of tropical rainforests in Africa, this landlocked country located in central Africa ranks second in Africa in terms of land area, and tropical rainforests almost occupy more than ninety percent of the country's land area, and the tropical rainforest area of such a country alone accounts for more than sixty percent of the entire African tropical rainforest area.

However, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is the poorest country on the planet, and there is no one.

Perhaps Zimbabwe's per capita income is lower than that of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), but that is caused by outrageous inflation, in fact, Zimbabwe's economy and infrastructure are still good, but some people with ulterior motives have disrupted the economic order, which has caused Zimbabwe's temporary predicament.

But the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is different, this country was colonized by the French before, but since independence in 1960, this country has always ranked first in the world's poorest countries, and has never been replaced, only in recent years has it been replaced by Zimbabwe, which has a chaotic financial order.

The poverty of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), that is the real poverty, the poverty without a trace of water. It is conceivable that such a country cannot even feed its citizens, so how can it have extra funds to maintain the poor few roads that shuttle through the tropical rainforest?

In fact, the roads in the DRC are only a matter of face, and there may be hundreds of kilometers of dilapidated roads outside the rainforest, but in the rainforest, there are really no roads. (PS: This is not Xiaomo's exaggeration, Xiaomo has two friends who are engaged in communication engineering in Africa, once went to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and almost died in it, it was stupid....... ）

If the roads in the DRC are in terrible condition, it's better to say that there is an even more terrifying thing in this country that makes all the riders afraid to pass through this country.

This terrifying thing is cannibalism!

That's right, in the rainforest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there is the largest cannibal tribe in the world, these guys don't have the name of cannibal on their heads, these guys are really cannibals!

But even the powerful Dahua has no problem with these cannibals. Even if Dahua's most elite royal guards entered this rainforest to capture those cannibals, they would not be able to catch them.

So, the poor traffic situation and the smelling cannibals have turned the DRC into a forbidden place in the Vladivostok-Cape Town car rally.

No rider would have dared to risk his life to cross this rainforest just to save a little bit of schedule, that wasn't a race, it was a lantern looking for (to die)!

With this forbidden life, which lies in the middle of the stage, a detour is necessary to get from Dakar to Angochet. One route is the northern route and the other is the western route.

The northern route starts from Dakar and follows the southern edge of the Sahara Desert eastward to South Sudan, then turns south from South Sudan through Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi to Tanzania, and from Tanzania to Mozambique.

The route is more than 12,000 kilometres long and is relatively easy to follow, with the majority of the route on the savannah, with the exception of some mountainous and plateau areas in Uganda and Burundi.

As for the western route, it starts from Dakar, also goes east along the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, goes to Nigeria and then turns south, along the east coast of the Atlantic Ocean through Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Congo, until it reaches Angola, and then goes southeast from Angola, along the African savannah diagonally through Zambia and Malawi, and crosses the Great Rift Valley into Mozambique.

The distance between the western route and the northern route is more than 12,000 kilometers, but it is not as difficult as the northern route because it has to cross the Adamawa Mountains in Cameroon and the Great Rift Valley in Malawi.

In any case, both the northern and western routes are classic routes summed up by veterans of the Vladivostok-Cape Town Rally, and many drivers will choose one of these two routes to reach Angochet.