The 2017 Dakar route will visit Paraguay

The 2017 Dakar rally route has been announced, with Paraguay as a new host country.

The Dakar’s organizers have had considerable difficulty putting together a route in recent years. Since the race pulled out of Africa after canceling the 2008 event, they’ve been fighting hard to get established in South America, with varying success.

On one hand, they’ve run eight rallies in South America, with a lot of beautiful scenery and challenging terrain. On the other hand, they’ve had to deal with countries making a commitment to the rally, then dropping out. Both Chile and Peru pulled out of the 2016 race, and some competitors complained the rally was poorly planned as a result of the last-minute changes required.

With Chile confirming they weren’t interested in the 2017 event, Dakar organizers were left scrambling to find another host country. Enter Paraguay. The 2017 race will start there, then run through Argentina, exit into Bolivia, then back into Argentina for the finish.

What does it mean?

What does the inclusion of Paraguay mean for the rally? Sad to say, it means Peru won’t be back this year, if ever. In turn, that means the sand dune-filled stages that once defined Dakar are increasingly becoming a fact of the past.

Paraguay does have some dunes, along the Paraná River, and it appears the rally heads through this area. However, these are not the towering behemoths that Dakar riders challenged in the past.

After entering Argentina, it appears the racers will blast through the Gran Chaco; this area features a mixture of woodland and savanna-type grasslands. In other words, expect more of the World Rally Championship-style stages that irked so many competitors in 2016.

The good news is, the ride should get more interesting from there as the racers head uphill towards their rest day in the Bolivian capital of La Paz. They’ll head back towards Argentina from there, finishing the race in Buenos Aires. It appears this last leg of the race will spend most of its time in the Andes, which have replaced the Saharan dunes as the new defining feature of the rally.

The 2017 rally will run January 2-14.