Midway Stage 2

We're now waiting at TA2, high up a mountain. The night is very cold and windy.

We left the cool little town of Fajao about 3 hours ago. There was a checkpoint in the main street, and a room in a building that opened on to the street (as they all do on those narrow cobbled streets) with food and hot soup for the teams.

It's slightly odd with the middle of the field coming through the checkpoints first, but around 7pm Nike arrived, followed 10 minutes later by Orion. Both teams pushing hard, and having collected all the checkpoints and bonuses so far.

At the end of the previous leg (trek leg 6), Nike had arrived first by about 3 minutes from Orion, with Orion transitioning slightly faster to leave about a minute ahead. Orion looked good, and were happy with their route choice and nav on the leg. Lundhags were just running up the road as we left the checkpoint, about 20 minutes behind the other two.

There's still a little confusion over the status of Nike's bonus checkpoint from the first leg of the first stage. They collected 105 points, and were not given the CP, as apparently the requirement was to get exactly 100 points. I don't think any of the teams realised that, and it will no doubt be disputed.

Nga Rakau had left the Fajao checkpoint before we arrived, they were riding up a huge hill on the way out of town as we drove down in to it. All looked happy enough.

We don't expect any teams to turn up here now for several hours.