Amazing Race: Taxi Driver Alliance

While I liked the trickier end to the leg with the pit stop clue, an odd set of circumstances led to a stronger team getting booted out of the finale and some teams that had no clue where to go, making it into the final three!

Before we get started, I have to mention that I found it super cool that the teams got to sleep in the Atomium that we saw in the previous leg.

Teams started out in Belgium where they had to dress up as detectives from the comic strip “Adventures of Tin Tin”. They had to figure out the names of the characters. They were one of three different names. All the teams left the pit stop in the middle of the night so they ran into a lot of drunk Belgians. Some knew who they were while others didn’t. The snowboarders were told by one guy that they looked like Charlie Chaplin, which they did. They didn’t know who that was though. Really? At one point, they had figured out they had something to do with “Adventures of Tin Tin” while doing some research online but still thought they were Charlie Chaplin. They didn’t try to figure out how Charlie Chaplin could be related to Tin Tin or find the names of the comic strip characters while they were researching online. The other teams had no issues finding out the character names and they all got the clue before the snowboarders. It didn’t matter though since they all took the same train/plane combo to Panama City.

Once in Panama, they were dropped off by their taxis in the pitch black of night. They climbed into some small boats and were taken to a village. The boring dating couple and snowboarders took off at the same time in the boats, but the snowboarders got ahead since the dating couple’s boat got stuck on a sand bar. The NFL and control freak teams left at the same time shortly after the first two teams. When they got to the village, they grabbed numbers so they could get a tribal tattoo the next day. They spent the night in hammocks on the island.

The next morning, the teams received henna tattoos that said San Francisco Bay Towers. The towers were located in Panama City so they went back from where they came from and found a roadblock. The game still has the rule where each team member has to do six tasks at the most so it was determined that Andy, Sandy, Cindy and Amani had to do it. They had to walk across a tightrope on the top of one tower to the other, grab a clue and walk back. There was safety gear and they had something to hold onto to help walk across. It was a bit freaky though. Andy walked like he was just taking a stroll. Sandy was scared of heights but she got through it too before Cindy and Amani got up to the top. Cindy went third, followed by Amani.

Next, the teams had to find a statue. The snowboarders’ taxi driver said he knew where it was located so they took off. The dating couple’s taxi driver figured out where they had to go and then he gave the directions to the Control Freak and NFL taxi drivers so they knew where to go when their teams got down from the building. Sandy and Jeremy were not too thrilled about their cab driver sharing that information, but they learned about it after it had happened so they couldn’t do much to stop it.

The next clue was a detour. The teams had the choice to deliver seafood to different stalls in a fish market or make one pair of sandals with leather and straps. I thought the sandal making sounded harder, but most teams picked that one except the NFL team. They did realize that their taxi drivers had made their own alliance so even though they told him to take them to the fish market, he just followed the other taxi cabs to the sandal making place. Most teams would have decided to just stay and make the sandals, but the NFL team really wanted to carry smelly fish so they had their taxi driver take them where he was supposed to go. Because of they didn’t have to compete with other teams at the fish market, they finished their task second overall. The snowboarders had no issues with the sandal task, but both boring dating couple and control freak teams had a bit of trouble with their straps getting twisted. Once they straightened them out, they finished and moved on.

The hardest part of the leg was at the Cathedral Square. The teams knew they would get the clue to the pit stop there, but they didn’t know what it was exactly. They knew it had something to do with the dancers in the square. There was a message written in to the pattern of one of the dresses that said Panama Viejo. There was also a picture of the building in the belt buckle of all the dancers. I liked that the task was a bit tricky instead of just telling them where to go.

The snowboarders arrived first. They were looking all over the dancers and saw that “Balboa” was written on all their jewelry. They didn’t realize that was their currency in Panama so they told their taxi drive to take them to Balboa. He took them to the Panama Canal. Nope! They were then told at the canal, they could go to Balboa Avenue and there was also a statue somewhere. They went off in that direction while the rest of the teams were at the square. Both the NFL and Control Freak team thought it was Balboa, but Jeremy made a sketch of the building and showed it to his driver. He said it was Panama Viejo so they got in their cab to see if it was the pit stop. What they soon realized was that their cab driver was on the phone with his cab buddies telling them where he was headed. They were not too thrilled about that but it already happened by the time they realized it. The other cab drivers ignored what NFL and Control Freak had told them about Balboa and just went to Panama Viejo.

At this time, the snowboarders had made their way back to the square realizing they needed to start over. They missed all the other teams and their cab driver was not in on the alliance so they were in the dark because they were so far ahead of the other teams that their mistake ended up putting them behind. Andy did see the message on the dress finally. They were the only team to find it. They headed off to the pit stop too.

Due to the weird cab alliance and the snowboarders missing out on other teams figuring out the clue, the final three teams going to the finale ended up being boring dating couple (wont a trip to Turks and Caico), Control Freaks and the NFL team. The snowboarders ended up being eliminated. Bizarre leg!

Questions

  1. Do you wish that the snowboarders had made the final three? Do you believe that being so far ahead of the other teams ended up harming them or they made other mistakes that led to them not making it into the final three?
  2. What do you think about the cab driver alliance and how they helped determine the final three teams?
  3. Are you amazed at how well the boring dating couple did on the leg and how they seem to be improving as a team as the race as gone along?

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