Amazing Race 13
Episode Two:
Salvador, Brazil to Fortaleza, Brazil.
I’m going to start this summary with a bit of a digression: in March of this year when I was driving through downtown Bellevue I saw a black box on a stand that made me immediately think it belonged to the Race.
The box was black, about the right size to hold a ‘Route Info’ or ‘Detour’ envelope and hanging from the bottom of the box was a banner or flag that was yellow, with a red strip (yellow-red-yellow).
The box had a pad lock so I could not open it, or look inside.
Another odd thing was that there were two boxes, and they were on a busy intersection (Bellevue Way and NE 12th Street). So I thought maybe the Race went through a nearby park or location the day before, which was a Sunday, and these were moved here for collection after the last team left.
No thanks to the gravy-sucking pigs at my cellular carrier I was able to get the picture off my cell phone without giving them any more money, but it did involve buying a USB cable from Amazon.com and hacking into the phone. Here is the picture of the two boxes I saw:
A Race Box in Bellevue?
Contrast this with a clue box at Cumbuco Beach near Forteleza Brazil.
A Race Box in Cumbuco, Brazil
But the question is does the Race really move boxes around the world, leapfrogging the contestants, or do they just give the specification to local contractors and the boxes actually differ slightly from country to country?
Did the Race go through Bellevue? Because the map of the Race has been published in advance this time, (although I try not to look at it because part of the fun is trying to guess from the previews where we are headed next) we know it ends in Portland—but could they have looped through Seattle on the way—or was something else going on?
Who Will Be Eliminated Next―
Okay, my first digression is over and as this leg begins Phil again reminds us that previously 11 teams left Los Angeles on a race around the world, for $1,000,000...Who will be eliminated next?
We learn that Nick and Starr were the first to arrive at the pit stop, the Forte Sao Marcelo at 4:07 PM. The last team checked in 66 minutes later, so on the first leg the teams were pretty close together.
Craig Tomashoff, writing in the Sept. 29th edition of TV Guide, discusses his shadowing of the teams on the first leg. He confirms that the teams spent almost 24 hours getting from LA to Salvador, with most of that time being crammed in an airplane seat in coach, which was particularly hard on Ty as he is over six feet tall. The TV Guide writer also notes it took him 20 minutes to climb down the cargo net at the Elevador Lacerda when he tried one of the detours. Oh, and the divorcees managed to kill a huge tarantula with a shoe.
Route Info: Fortaleza Brazil
But enough reminiscing about the first leg, it is time to get underway with the second leg, which Phil reminds us is beginning after a ‘mandatory rest’ (and ‘spider killing’) period, and now, with $145 dollars in their pockets, the teams are going to fly 640 miles to Fortaleza, Brazil. Once there they will take a taxi to the Plaza del Cumbuco in the small coastal town of Cumbuco, where they will find their next clue.
Teams pretty much trace the same route back to the airport that they first took when they arrived in Salvador, and I will call the route and the distance the same for the purposes of this summary.
On the way to the airport, Terrence gets hit on the head with the trunk of the cab, giving us another opportunity to see him interact with Sarah. While Phil keeps referring to them as ‘newly dating’, the CBS Race Web site says they have been dating for almost a year.
The first teams to arrive at the airport in Salvador find that there is a flight at 6:45 AM, but initially there is only one seat on the flight. I think that the ticket agent realized there was an opportunity to move more people and make some money so she arranged to get a larger plane for the flight.
Tina however is convinced that she single-handedly talked the airline into putting on a larger plane, and therefore, she is ‘Queen for a Day’ and entitled to tell the other teams what to do, including setting the order that everyone will board the plane. Ah such delusions of grandeur.
And it is at the airport ticket counter that the Southern Belles give us the rather lame title for this leg: ‘Do you like American Candy?’ when they offer a piece of candy to the gentleman behind the airline ticket counter. I don’t think that I am giving too much about the episode away if I say for the record, I think a better title would be: ‘Can’t Any of You Read?’
But at least the Southern Belles, and most of the teams are saying ‘thank you’ and being polite to the people they encounter.
All the teams make in on Tina’s GOL flight, a Brazilian regional carrier that does have a flight (1642) at 6:45 AM from Salvador (SSA) via Recife (REC) arriving at Fortaleza (FOR) 9:40 AM. It costs 530,00 R (Reals) or approximately $229 according to MSN Money.
This map shows the basic location of the three cities on the coast of Brazil:
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A TAM flight following the same route shows SSA to REC is 403 miles and takes 1:15, and REC to FOR covers 389 miles in 1:15. So the total distance is 792 miles (or about 100 more miles then Phil’s ‘As the Crow Flies’ estimate). The flight with connections appears to take between 2:30 and 2:55.
Fortaleza, the capital city of the State of Ceará, has been one of the most popular destinations for Brazilian tourists for decades. In recent years, the fame of Fortaleza has spread, and the number of European, and North and South American travelers coming to Cearás is growing fast. As we saw on the race, Fortaleza and the Cearás have some fantastic beaches.
The teams all get cabs and head towards Cumbuco beach, which is one of the best beaches in Brazil, but really hard to find on a map. I finally found an address for the Cumbuco Inn, and used it as the marker for the town.
Anthony and Stephanie find the only non-running cab in the queue and waste time and energy pushing it so that the driver can pop the clutch to start the engine. Eventually they do what they should have all along and get the next cab. Yes, all the cabs do look like they were used for ‘bumper cars’ but at an airport there are generally enough cabs so that you can find one that is working before you can fix one. And at least they realize that they are more fortunate then the average Brazilian, although Anthony seems to think their economic future merely requires that they learn how to fix cars.
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Cumbuco beach is basically 21 to 25 miles north along the coast from Fortaleza, and is popular for dune buggy riding and kiting.
Route Info: Barraca D’Mandel
Once the teams arrive in Cumbuco, they have to take a dune buggy up the beach to the Barraca, which seems to mean tent or hut, where they will get their next clue. Just as it is hard to say where along the highway Cumbucco is, it continues to be hard to determine where along the beach the teams are. The clue apparently says the teams are heading to the Village of Cauipe, but the center of this town is actually slightly inland (the highway moves inland although in the above map you can see a large lagoon and a road with the ‘Cauipe’ name in it, which heads up the coast to the next locatable landmark.
Detour: Beach It or Dock It
At the end of the dune buggy ride, the teams get their next clue which is a detour. A detour is a choice between―okay we all remember what a detour is.
In ‘Beach It’, teams have drive further up the beach, and then manually move a 440 pound boat known as a jangada 100 yards across the beach. The teams, and a two man crew, will use logs to roll the boat, and each time they roll off a log at the back of the boat, they have to pick it up, and carry it to the front of the boat. Given that the boats are about 25 feet long, and each team only has two logs, they would have to pick up and move the logs a lot to move the boat the required distance.
‘In Dock It’, teams will head to the Port of Pecem, and there they have to find the container with the number on their clue. The four letter code will help them narrow down the places they have to look for the container, which Phil says will not be hard if you have ‘an eye for detail.’
All of the teams except the geeks do ‘Beach It’, and most of them just work their way through the task.
The Southern Belles were planning to do ‘Dock It’, but ended up at the ‘Beach It’, so decided to do it.
It is not because the ‘Dock It’ task is more interesting, but rather where this port is and what it is used for that is interesting. I started looking at the Google satellite view for a river or a natural bay and could not see anything that made sense. I think this is because I was also looking for a town or city.
But a search for articles on the port showed that the ships don’t really come into the port, but rather there is a long breakwater out into the ocean. Look at the satellite view and you can see the container yard inland, with a rail line terminating at it, and further out, offshore, you can see a docked boat.
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So why build a port in such an isolated location? Well initially fruit was exported from the port, and now liquefied natural gas is a key product moving through the port, in which BP appears to be playing a role. Also, as the geeks are scrolling down the list of containers, at least one of them is destined to Juneau and several others for Seattle.
All in all if a team was methodical, like the geeks, ‘Dock It’ wasn’t too hard, but it raises one other point: there should be a law stating that past a certain age, like maybe fifteen, it is illegal for a guy, even if he is a self-proclaimed geek, to talk like Yoda. Creepy, this is. Yes, hmmm.
In terms of how far the teams travelled from Cumbuco, driving on roads from where the teams got the dune buggies to the port would cover about 22 miles, because the road goes inland and then twists its way through the area. Straight up the beach in a dune buggy was likely a 5 to 10 mile trip.
Route Info: Parque de Vaquejada
Terrence and Sarah finish the ‘Beach It’ detour first, and get the next clue which tells the teams to follow the path to the taxis, and then take a taxi to the Parque de Vaquejada. But they didn’t read all of the clue and miss the race colored arrows that point to the taxis parked near the big sign that read ‘Taxi Parking’. Instead they run the wrong direction down the beach heading towards a distant town to catch a cab. Eventually they make their way to the highway, where they watch at least three teams pass them before Toni and Dallas stop and tell them they have to go back to where the task ended to get a waiting cab.
The geeks leave the terminal, and enter the parking lot with the taxis from the other side, so we know that the teams doing ‘Dock It’ and ‘Beach It’ were physically close together.
The divorcees mix the clues up, and after doing ‘Beach It’ start looking for a container, even digging in the sand. This wasted diversion allows at least three teams to pass them. Argh!
But this just leads to another question: what is up with Anthony and Stephanie, who both seem young and reasonably fit and yet it took them so long to do ‘Beach It’ that even with the screw-up Terrence and Sarah get in the taxi before these two? Obviously they have problems committing to each other and to the race.
Anyways it seems that a Vaquejada is a rodeo. But where is the Parque de Vaquejada? On the sign shown in the episode, it also says Gera Arruda. After checking several of the Vaquejada sites the best I can come up with is that it is in Caucaia, a suburb of Fortaleza. This map shows the route from the Detour to Caucaia, which is approximately 22 miles.
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Road Block: In Plain Site
A road block is a task that only one team member can perform, and typically the team members each have to perform their share of the roadblocks.
This is one of the poorest designed roadblocks ever. Teams have to find the name of their next destination, which is written somewhere on the wall of the park—in plain site. But the wall of the park is used for a variety of advertisements and messages, and there is a lot of text on the wall. Phil says teams should follow the ‘laid back Brazilian beach culture’ and ‘resist over thinking the Portuguese ads.’
Having looked at this several times, the only thing I noticed was that advertisements appear to be painted in color, while names of cities or destinations were painted with black paint.
The key part of the wall you had to find.
The geeks notice that the number 11 occurs serveral times on the wall so they pick the 11th destination in the list, but that was not correct, so they just write down the entire list and read if off one at a time until the painter gives them the clue.
The geeks finish first, and Tina copying their technique finishes second.
After claiming they have learned to read the clue, the divorcees apparently didn’t read the part of the clue that told the teams to have their cab wait, so they solve the puzzle and then wander around for a couple of minutes before they realize that their cab driver did wait for them.
The southern belles in their second day in Brazil, still think that the native language is Spanish, and they complain and struggle with the roadblock because they don’t know Spanish. Apparently they also don’t know Portuguese.
Route Info: Cidade da Crianca
Teams are now on their way by taxi to the pit stop, at the Cidade da Crianca, which Phil tells us was built as an oasis for the children of Fortaleza. Actually it looks like a slightly weird park.
It is about 9 miles from the roadblock to the pit stop.
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Ken and Tina beat the Geeks in a foot race to Phil. They win some off-road vehicles, the perfect gift for a separated couple.
Terrence and Sarah, Toni and Dallas, and Aja and Ty finish next in a virtual tie. Nick and Starr are team number six. The Divorcees are team number seven. The Frat Boys and the Southern Belles are also tied. Anthony and Stephanie are the last to arrive and are eliminated.
All the teams travelled the same distance this week, 875 miles, and we are now at the end of day four. Teams that went on American Airlines have travelled 8,199 miles, and those on United travelled 8,792 miles.
This episode was really quite frustrating—did Anthony and Stephanie just give up?
So many teams failed to read the clue completely. This is the thirteenth race, and by now you would think teams would get over the tendency to rush and instead would stop and read the clue.
By read the clue I mean not just glance at the clue, but actually read it, digest it, maybe even break it into the necessary elements like 1) take a cab, 2) go to location, 3) perform the task, 4) have the cab wait for you.
Phil loves to ask who will be eliminated next? I look at this differently—the team that won’t be eliminated will be the team that puts the clue somewhere where they can find it to easily to check the clue when they get confused.
The team that won’t be eliminated will separate the parts of the clue they need from the parts they don’t need, for example that describe an alternative task that the team chooses not to do, in a place where the unneeded instructions won’t confuse them later.
I mean seriously, these teams always claim they are such big fans of the show, but after thirteen races there are a couple of things potential teams should know how-to do. For example, don’t even apply unless both team members know how to drive a car with a standard transmission, know how to determine what kind of fuel a vehicle needs, and know how to read a clue.
Oh, I know this last requirement, being able to actually read and follow directions is asking a lot, but hey, its about completing the race and getting all the way around the world. Few people get that chance, so if a $1,000,000 bucks isn’t sufficient incentive at least try to be one of the last teams eliminated.
Sure a team can still hit bad luck, like rolling out a hundred or more bales of hay and never finding a clue, but the majority of eliminations come over the stupidest of mistakes.