'Amazing Race 13' - from Bolivian Cholitas to Kiwis

The fourth lap of “The Amazing Race” last evening found the remaining eight teams leaving La Paz in Bolivia for Auckland, New Zealand, the home turf of host Phil Keoghan. In fact, his father — who simply called himself Phil’s dad — was the official greeter with his son at the evening’s Pit Stop at a sheep farm called Summerhill.  And he is quite the handsome older guy. Really. I think I have a crush on him.

The teams flew 6,900 miles from La Paz to Auckland, where they had to drive themselves to Gulf Harbor and untie a Gordian knot to find their next clue — to drive to the summit of Mount Eden, where they would find their next clue.  Estranged couple Ken & Tina decided to take the Fast Forward, where they had to climb from the sky deck to the top of the Sky Tower in Auckland and retrieve a Travelocity roaming gnome. (Nothing like product placement, natch).  Though Tina was afraid of  heights, she overcame her fear and they completed the task and reached the Pit Stop, winning for the third week in a row. They also ended up earning a seven-day trip to Rio de Janeiro during carnival time from, you guessed it, Travelocity.

The rest of the teams faced the Road Block in which one of the members had a close encounter with several chanting Maori warriors . They had to figure out which one of their facial tattoos matched the design they were given. The annoyingly whiny Terence of  team Terence & Sarah actually stepped up to the plate and did the task. From there, the teams had to drive back to the rooftop of an Auckland hotel and look with binoculars for those ugly Travelocity gnomes that were placed in nearby locations.

The clue at the bottom of the gnomes told them to go to a location called Kiwi 360, where they got the week’s Detour — Matter of Time or Matter of Skill.  Matter of Time had contestants doing the Lucy crushing-grapes routine — they had to jump into a cart and crush kiwi fruit in order to make 12 quarts of juice, and then each team had to drink a glass of it.  Matter of Skill revolved around blokart construction and racing three laps. The kiwi-crushing was time-consuming and painful, and several groups who tried it, including mom and son Toni & Dallas, gave up and did the blokart.

Starr of the brother and sister team of Nick & Starr suffered an arm injury during the kart race and thought she had broken it. She hadn’t, but she certainly cried a lot.

Of course, the Nick & Starr and Christy & Kelly feud that began the week before over a sports bra  heated up, and long-distance lovers Aja & Ty began to get on each other’s nerves, with Aja actually calling his girlfriend “Fidel Castro.”

The blond Southern belles Marisa Axelrod and Brooke Jackson ran into problems at the Auckland airport and never recovered, and ended up being eliminated from the race. At least, though, they got a big hug from Phil’s cute dad.

“The airplane was huge that we were in to New Zealand, and we were in the back of it,” explained Brooke, who is a graphic designer in Columbia, S.C.  “We were late getting off the airplane and we had to get through security.  Once we got out to the parking lot to our cars, it was dark outside and I was on the wrong side of the road. It’s stressful  We had printed out instructions from the Internet to get to the harbor and we got turned around a couple of times.”

And then they didn’t know what a Gordian knot was.  “We thought it was some sort of a knot on a boat.”

Marisa, a broadcast journalism student at the University of South Carolina, says the “Amazing Race” was far more difficult than they imagined.  “Brooke and I had studied different seasons before we left.  But just by watching it, we thought, “We can do this.” But when you are actually doing it, it is so much harder than it looks. There are so many different things that go into it.”

— Susan King, Los Angeles Times staff writer

[Photo credit: CBS.com]

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 20, 2008 at 12:25 pm by Susan King and is filed under Amazing Race, Latin America & Caribbean, News, Tips & Advice, Pacific & Australia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.