Culturally Preconditioned

After the dreadful, dreadful episode of TARA3 last week, I was so looking forward to tonight’s episode of The Amazing Race. Teams started off from Fortaleza, Brazil. It’s surprising to know that teams #3 to #9 all arrived within only 90 minutes of each other at the last pitstop. Anyway, teams were to fly out to La Paz in Bolivia. The city sits above 12,000 feet above sea level, which promises this leg was going to be just a little harder than the rest because of the elevation. Teams arrive in La Paz with surprisingly no airport drama. I have a feeling they were given two predetermined flights out fro Fortaleza, as the producers had to ensure they would all arrive in La Paz in time for the morning paper.

Once in La Paz, teams slept overnight at some plaza while waiting for the morning newspaper. We see once again, a rehashed challenge where they had to spot in the newspaper on where their next destination was going to be. The clue that they were looking for (”a hat sale”) personally didn’t indicate anything to me that it was a TAR clue, so I would assume that was the one and only English advert in that paper today. Once at the Narvaez Hat Shop, teams receive clue to the next detour.

The next detour asks the teams to pick either (1) Musical March - where they had to pick musicians and lead a marching band on foot to two different plazas, or (2) Bumpy Ride - where they had to choose some classicial bicycles and ride in down to .. mm somewhere. Interesting to note that two teams failed to read their clue, and picked a taxi, instead of going on foot, to reach their next detour. Terrence/Sarah realized their mistake and went back on foot, whereas Bill/Mark didn’t realize this till much later in the leg. I’m a little puzzled as to why teams chose to go with the musical march, cause you can only go as slow or as fast as the marching band.
A U-Turn awaits at the end of the detour, and there was almost some U-turn drama… but not really. Seems like we’ve gotten one of our weirdest fights ever on TAR so far. SPORTSBRAGATE. lol i mean.. wtf? The whole divorcee/Starr tiff was unnecessary drama IMO. SO this little tiff almost caused Star to U-Turn the divorcees, but she didn’t. She did, however, tell Aja/Ty to U-Turn the divorcees. Actually it kinda made sense if they were the second last team.. but oh well.

So they get to a roadblock about 8 miles away, where the next Roadblock was fighting Cholitas. One person from the teams had to go through a wrestling training with a chica. They had to successfully complete six different stunts in order. A pretty original idea, and was kinda fun. I would expect this roadblock gave a chance for some of the teams to relax and have a laugh, which is a good thing. After the roadblock, teams head to the next pitstop. In the order of the arrivals at the pitstop :

Show Me The Spoiler

All in all, it was an okay episode. Looking forward to next week’s episode where someone breaks an arm after being told not to. ssts.