While New Zealand has been navigating new lockdown rules, one Kiwi has been navigating across the Sahara Desert.
Sue Alemann, 52, has finally finished the all-female Gazelle Rally.
They started in North Morocco and finished to a hero's welcome on the Essaouria Beach
"Was it as hard as we expected? No it was much much harder," Alemann said.
Alemann completed the race with British teammate Helen Tait-Wright.
"We're exceptionally lucky, there's been so many teams who've had really bad accidents, cars that have landed on their roofs in the dunes, people who have had batteries who've burst into flames. We had teams who have pitchpoled off dunes and flipped five times over another team cartwheel three times," Tait-Wright said.
Their quest across the Sahara was gruelling. Travelling in 50 degree heat, they have no GPS and travelling across more than 15 hundred kilometres of terrain.
"The sand is like molten liquid which for Helen to drive through that, hit all of our checkpoints was miraculous and for me running up and down those dunes in that heat its like trying to run up and down a river," says Alemann.
The trio of Alemann, Tait-Wright and their trusty Land Rover Priscilla were climbing up the rankings and were sitting in the top 40 of almost 200 teams. Heading into day four though, their power steering seized.
"We got to a point where we just couldn't continue without having the car fixed and unfortunately the only way to do that was to get outside assistance, which means that we are out of the ranking," said Tait-Wright.
They may have been out of the rankings but they were no way out of the race.
All three of them still managed to make it to the finish.
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