Dakar Rally this year is in South America for the third year in a row

Because of political disturbances and security threats along the route of the famed Dakar Rally's traditional route in Africa, the race has been runing in South America since 2009. Started in 1979, the race originally began in Paris, France and finished in Dakar, Senegal, but in its South American guise, it begins in Buenos Aires, on the Plaza de la Republica and runs through Patagonia, the Andes Mountains, along the shores of the Pacific Ocean in Chile and back to Argentina through the Atacama Desert, the driest place on earth.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2042615,00.html#ixzz1CYFXK7rx