as most of you might know the next isde will be in portugal (my country) in october 2009...

Located 200 km north of lisbon, the village of figueira da foz will receive the six days... it is a beautiful fisherman´s village near the sea, so the first days most of the terrain will be sand, then the usual hardpack and the last day will be on a mx track (witch is part of the FIM world motocross championship) located in agueda...

link of presentation http://www.fnm.pt/fnm/artigo.asp?cod_artigo=169768

link of the video http://www.fnm.pt/fnm/artigo.asp?cod_artigo=169768

As most of the information you will find is in portuguese, so if anybody need any help with language or other information, i will be glad to help...
as i work in tourism (in a hotel) i might have some information for those who want to come for the race

I was hoping to make it to Portugal this year, but my bank account wouldn't let me. Doing the past 2 ISDE's pretty much put me in the poor house. I will be doing Mexico in 2010 though!

Tell us about the terrain for the ISDE in Portugal. Are they running up and down the beach for the first few days and then up in the hills for the other half. Is it single track or open trails. Beach sand is not fun and really hard on the bikes. Hoping it would go up in the hills and run some tight technical trails.

this is what i know for the moment:
the first day will be on sand, right on the beach. the second will be part sand, part rocks on a big rocks excavation.
those days will be easy to do. the organization claims that want to keep the bigger number of riders thru the days they can.

third and fourth day is mainly hills and mountain. they kept all the dificulties for the way down, so cannot be any place with a big number of riders.
all days will be in 90-100 kilometers range.

fifth day: sand, hardpack, rocks etc. it´s one of the hardest days and will have every kind of terrain. this day will have slightly modified specials from the portuguese enduro championship.

the last day will be a 85 km trip from "figueira da foz" to "agueda" where is located the FIM GP motocross track. here is where will end all the six days. right on a mx track.


until this moment are confirmed some 500 pilots for the isde.
as usual, the portuguese federation is doing a great job. those who follow the dakar knows this. they start with a guess of 1200 euros each person registration, including licence and insurance. they could lower this value to 350-450 euros. this is a great low cost and is the same value as a major national such a baja...

i hope i can get there at least for one day

http://www.isde2009-live.info/
a link to follow the live results on the isde.