January is traditionally a quiet month in the motor industry, but for me this year started with a massive bang. The one moment I was lounging around after a New Year's party, and the next I was in the midst of Gulf War III. Or so it seemed, when I arrived at the so-called bivouac outside the town of Copiapo, Chile, to spend a couple of days on the famous Dakar Rally. Thankfully I managed to load the waypoints for the Dakar onto my GPSMAP 78s before leaving, which greatly aided us during our visit. Not that the pilots needed much help in finding the airport! My route from Cape Town went via Joburg, Beunos Aires and Santiago to Copiapo.

Having heard of the mining town on the Chilean West Coast before, thanks mainly to the group of unfortunate miners who were trapped underground there for more than a month last year, I felt the need to prepare for my arrival by reading through the relevant chapter in my trusty Lonely Planet Guide for South America. But their comment on Copiapo didn't make me want to go there, any more than those poor miners wanted to go back under ground after their harrowing escape:

"Powerful hirsute men wrangle through the bars and strip halls of this not-ready-for-TV mining town. But like most places on the frontier, there's a certain atavistic, visceral attraction to it all. This said, it's not really worth stopping here..."

Nice. But that's the town itself, where its 130,000 inhabitants do whatever it is they do - what we came to see was located about twenty clicks outside of town, and is known as the "bivouac". But that's what the Frenchmen, who run the event call it. To us it soon became known simply as the 'bivvy' - the temporary encampment where all the teams, service trucks and support crews pitch their tents and build their workshops every day of the rally. It is, quite simply, an astounding place to visit. With a length of roughly 500 meters and a width of 200 meters, the bivvy is one square kilometre of frenzied activity, from the moment the first crews arrive, until the moment the very last of them depart.

Inside this encampment you'll find not only the teams, but also odd things like the Red Bull Chill Zone, which comes complete with a truck toting a DJ and speakers. There's a merchandising store, info centre, TV studios, doctors, ablutions, helipad and dining area. The caterers prepare around 2,500 meals per sitting, and shift more than ten tons of food on a daily basis. And all around you is the merry sound of air tools, engines being revved and boots crunching through the never ending Atacaman dust.

But the rest day is also a chance for mere mortals, like us, to rub shoulders with people like Stephane Peterhansel, Nani Roma, Marc Coma, Nasser Al-Attiyah, Cyril Despres, Robbie Gordon and, of course, Giniel de Villiers. These are the names of the true dessert foxes - the men who have, by and large, tamed the Dakar. All of them, except Gordon, of course, who has yet to make it to the top step of the podium. And standing at the Hummer pits in the bivouac outside Copiapo late on the night of 8 January 2012, it was quite clear that 2012 wouldn't be his year either. Not because of any mechanical difficulties, mind you - but the throngs of race officials crowded around Gordon's orange monster spelled trouble... And trouble it was, as he was excluded from the rally the very next day for a technical infringement relating to the tyre inflation system in his Hummer. Gordon appealed the exclusion and continued racing - his appeal will only be heard in the weeks after the event, so by the time you read this, Gordon's fate may still be in the balance.

Following the Dakar is a task best not attempted by the faint of heart. Charging through long stretches of colourless Atacama desert (at times our poor Nissan hired bakkie topped out at 180 km/h indicated - which was only about 162 km/h according to my Garmin), judged by many to be the driest place on earth, just to catch a glimpse of the cars and bikes - and the gargantuan racing trucks - as they barrel past a checkpoint, somewhere in the vast emptiness of Chile. But for petrol heads, it is unadulterated heaven.

And then, finally catching up with the entire circus at the next bivouac, near Antofagasta, you get a chance to chat to the likes of De Villiers and Vos - two of 'our boys', in their Imperial Toyota Hiluxes. "Jis, it was a tough stage," De Villiers is ever the master of understatement. But he is also a master of the Dakar, and even though he didn't win a single stage on this year's race, he was there on the third step of the podium in Lima.

But Lima was a bridge too far for our little group of journalists. We'd just gotten into the swing of things when it was time to go. And from Iquique, in the north of Chile, we bid farewell to the bivouac and the Dakar. What was telling, however, was how every single one of the 'hardened journalists' in our group craned their necks for one last look at the Dakar, as the Airbus A318 climbed out of Iquique's little airport. Such is the nature of this event: It gets under your skin, and like the sands of the Atacama, it isn't easy to shake the lingering memories of one of the greatest races left on the planet.

When the dust finally settled in Lima, the boys from ASO must have been smiling like lottery winners, because the two main winners - in the bike and car categories - were both French. Cyril Despres triumphed over KTM team mate Marc Coma of Spain, bringing his total tally of Dakar victories to four. Helder Rodrigues (Portugal) finished in third again, taking two stage victories in the process.

In the cars it was Stephane Peterhansel who added a tenth victory to his Dakar record - and his fourth in a car. He was followed home by Team X-Raid teammate, and fellow MINI All4 Racing pilot, Nani Roma (Spain). So it was a KTM one-and-two finish in the bikes, with a Frenchman leading a Spaniard; and the same thing in the cars, except they were so-called MINIs...

But perhaps the greatest 'victory' of them all belonged to South Africa's Giniel de Villiers, driving the Imperial Toyota Hilux, which was built to the regulations for the 2013 event. This meant that his vehicle's near-standard engine was significantly down on power and torque, when compared to the race-winning MINIs. Before the event, team boss Glyn Hall was hoping for a Top 5 finish; but the Hilux was even more reliable than they had anticipated, and as De Villiers put it at the end: "This is an excellent result, finishing on the podium on our first try tastes like a win. The rules are gooing to change next year, so we'll be even closer and the battle will be awesome." And next year, the aim will surely be to reach the top step of the podium, in a car proudly build right here, in South Africa.