‘The Amazing Race’: a sports-bra flies in Brazil, Fighting Cholitas in Bolivia

The third leg of the race last night began with accusations — and a bra — flying, with Texas divorcee Christy accusing Starr of tossing her sports bra out the window at the Pit Stop in Brazil.  Though Starr kept insisting in her on-camera interviews that she wasn’t abreast with what happened to Christy’s bra — even her brother Nick stepped in to tell Christy that she didn’t do it — hell hath no fury as a woman scorned.  Christy and partner Kelly and Nick & Starr are officially at loggerheads.  It got so bad at one point that Aja told Christy that Nick & Starr tried to persuade her and her partner, boyfriend Ty, to U-Turn Kelly & Christy.

Last night, the nine remaining teams finally departed Brazil for La Paz, Bolivia, where the 12,000-foot-plus elevation made breathing difficult for the contestants. After tracking down their next clue in a newspaper want ad, the teams took taxis to a shop to buy a traditional Cholita hat and get their next clue, which was the Detour. The teams could choose either “Musical March,” in which they walk to various plazas in the town and gather up musicians to make an orchestra, or “Bumpy Ride,” in which they had to maneuver down narrow cobblestone streets on crudely made bikes. The instructions distinctly said that all the teams had to walk to their Detour of choice. But hyper boyfriend/girlfriend Terence & Sarah and comic-book geeks Mark & Bill didn’t read the instructions properly and took taxis. Terence & Sarah realized their mistake and backtracked, but the game nerds failed to realize their error.

Though they started in last place, Southern belles Marisa & Brooke made a wise decision to tackle the orchestra and made up time on several of the teams.

After completing the Detour, the groups were sent eight miles outside of La Paz to Los Titanes del Ring, where they encountered the Road Block.

A member of the team had to get in the ring with one of the Fighting Cholitas — colorful female wrestlers. They first trained with their chosen Cholita and learned six different moves. Dressed in outrageous spandex outfits, the team member had to enter the ring and perform their moves with their Cholita. If they failed to do any of the moves properly, they had to retrain and start over.  Ken impressed his estranged wife, Tina, by quickly completing the task.  But it took Mark three times — and oxygen — to finally get the last clue to go to the Pit Stop at Mirador el Monticulo.

And yet again, the annoying Ken & Tina finished in first place, winning a weeklong trip to Cabo San Lucas after the race is completed.  Mark & Bill came in eighth, but because they didn’t follow instructions they were given a 30-minute penalty. Christy & Kelly, who were the last to reach the pit stop, were saved from elimination because of team Mark & Bill’s snafu.

The San Diego-based Mark Ypueralde and Bill Kahler acknowledged after their elimination that they will be ”reading everything twice” from now on. Mark joked that “I’m reading the back of my Snapple bottle for the 50th time. ”

Mark added that he thought the biggest problem in Bolivia was “the lobotomy of being at 15,000 feet. I never really appreciated oxgyen until that day. Now I savor every breath.”

“We watched the show and we know that people mess up on clue readings,” said Bill. “We said to each other, ‘We are going to read the clue. We are not going to just read it once.’ And we went back on that. I think part of the reason for it in that particular case is that we had seen Terence &  Sarah hop into their cab. We were like, ‘We have got to get into a cab,’ and we just didn’t go back in and look at [the directions] again until very, very far after that.”

As for fighting the Cholita, Mark said: “I’m getting some good-natured ribbing from friends. But my response is, you fly to La Paz, sleep in the busiest intersection overnight on the cold stone, wake up, run up a hill and then go fight a Cholita. I am very proud of just how good I look in spandex.”

— Susan King, Los Angeles Times staff writer

[Photo: Bill of the comic-book geeks team of Mark & Bill; Credit: CBS]

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 13, 2008 at 12:08 pm by Susan King and is filed under Amazing Race, Celebrity, Global, News, Tips & Advice. 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.