TAR13 timeline speculation

[puddin]

per spoilers..

April22-LA Memorial Coliseum to Sao Paulo, Brazil (11 teams of 2)
April23-Sao Paulo to Rio De Janeiro International Airport, Brazil
April24-Bahia de Brazil --rappel at Elevador Lacerda 
April25-Bahia de Brazil --Fortaleza, Brazil find key phrase on painted wall
April26-Fortaleza, Brazil --Bolivia
April27-Fortaleza, Brazil --Bolivia
April28-La Paz, Bolivia (U-Turn sighting)
April29-Santa Cruz, Bolivia (Phil airport Sighting)
April30-Santiago, Chile (airport connection)
May1- (IDL)
May3- Auckland, NZ -Singapore (connection)
May4-Siem Reap/Angkor Watt, Cambodia  ( 7 teams?)
May5-Siem Reap, Cambodia
May6-Thailand International Airport-Delhi India---New Delhi, India ( connection/aiport)  (6 teams)
May7-New Delhi, India.....
May7-.......Dubai International Airport? (connection?) or more *Delhi?
May8- I think more Delhi
May9- Delhi to Astana?, Kazakhstan
May10-Astana?, Kazakhstan
May11-Almaty, Kazakhstan
May12-13 Moscow, Russia -- Frankfurt, Germany
May13-Frankfurt Germany (connection only) to USA Portland, Oregon

Neobie map

[Mrs Shrek]

With the racers seemingly disappearing off the face of the earth after Dubai until the finish line, is it possible that the tourist trap of Europe was bypassed all together this time round, except for perhaps a splash and dash in transit if required? (in line with BM's description of a crazy route)
It seems strange that there would be no sightings from all those blog happy European tourists, but if they took a route off the beaten path, then it could help account for the disappearance of our racers, and the delay/absence of any tourist blogs.
From a production point of view, it is better to lose the race detectives in the second half of the filming, to keep the end bootlist secret, and the route could possibly have been planed to reduce the risk of sightings in the second half of filming.

[patlini]

I think that one or two legs in Europe is quite viable, the racers usually self drive so that is harder to spoil and as it is getting down to the wire less teams so not so much herding in big groups.

last time around we didn't anything of them in Ireland, Lithuania or Italy so I think Europe will be in the mix

[gingerman28]

After Dubai the remaining teams could head up to Europe and then be able to fly from Frankfurt or Amsterdam direct to Portland.   Looks like perhaps two legs missing between Dubai (which very well could just be a transit site) and Portland.

[apskip]

per spoilers..


April22-LA to Sao Paulo, Brazil (11 teams of 2)
April23-Sao Paulo, Brazil
April24-Bahia de Brazil --rappel at Elevador Lacerda 
April25-Bahia de Brazil
April26-somewhere South America
April27-somewhere South America
April28-La Paz, Bolivia (U-Turn sighting)
April29-Santa Cruz, Bolivia (Phil Sighting)
April30-Santiago, Chile (airport)
May1- (IDL)
May2-
May3-
May4-Siem Reap/Angkor Watt, Cambodia  (6 or 7 teams?)
May5
May6-Thailand International Airport (5 or 6 teams?)
May7-Delhi India?
May8-Dubai International Airport?
May9-
May10-
May11-
May12-
May13-USA Portland Oregon?
May14-USA Portland Oregon?

puddin, this looks basically right. I count 6 legs there before Dubai International Airport. It is not clear whether a stop in Dubai makes it 7. I have been working for hours on various scenarios of flights for legs 7, 8, 9 and 10 assuming that teams go right on from Dubai. Here is what I have:

May 8 leg 7 DBX ALA (Almaty) to take AR13 to Kazakhstan for 24 hours 0705 1030
May 9 TransAtlantic641 and 941 from ALA through TSE (Astana) to FRA 1610 2135
May 10 leg 8 Frankfurt for 24 hours(tasks plus pitstop)
May 11 leg 9 FRA to somewhere else close in Germany (Baden Baden, Heidleberg, Stuttgart, Mannheim, Mainz Koblenz, Cologne would be among the top choices for such a side trip)
May 12 finish that leg with a 36 hour extended pitstop
May 13 leg 10 FRA PDX 0945 1120 LH 468, then tasks around the Portland area until FINISH LINE

[puddin]

Like you apskip's, I would love to see the race go to Kazakhstan but wish we had some hard proof, still we can keep our fingers crossed. Its just beautiful from what I've seen

[Mrs Shrek]

I think that one or two legs in Europe is quite viable, the racers usually self drive so that is harder to spoil and as it is getting down to the wire less teams so not so much herding in big groups.

last time around we didn't anything of them in Ireland, Lithuania or Italy so I think Europe will be in the mix

I agree that self driving would make the teams harder to spot, and I also know that BvM's quotes can often be taken with a pinch of salt, but heading straight off to Europe just doesn't seem very "original and insane"
Visiting somewhere like Kazakhstan, or bypassing Europe all together would perhaps help fill those criteria

[apskip]

From above:

I count 6 legs there before Dubai International Airport. It is not clear whether a stop in Dubai makes it 7. I have been working for hours on various scenarios of flights for legs 7, 8, 9 and 10 assuming that teams go right on from Dubai. Here is what I have:

May 8 leg 7 DBX ALA (Almaty) to take AR13 to Kazakhstan for 24 hours 0705 1030
May 9 641 and 941 from ALA through TSE (Astana) to FRA 1610 2135
May 10 leg 8 Frankfurt for 24 hours(tasks plus pitstop)
May 11 leg 9 FRA to somewhere else close in Germany (Baden Baden, Heidleberg, Stuttgart, Mannheim, Mainz Koblenz, Cologne would be among the top choices for such a side trip)
May 12 finish that leg with a 36 hour extended pitstop
May 13 leg 10 FRA PDX 0945 1120 LH 468, then tasks around the Portland area until FINISH LINE

OK, I have continued thinking about this and there are a few things I don't like about it:
1. only 1 leg in Kazakhstan. Why not 2?
2. There aren't 11 legs, which would include 2 TBCs/non-elimins plus 8 elimination points plus 1 Finale.

So, what have I done about that. You guessed it, an alternate speculation:

May 8 leg 7 DBX ALA (Almaty)  0705 1030 followed by tasks
May 9 leg 8 KC854 ALA TSE(Astana) 1540 1740 followed by tasks
May 10 leg 9 TSE FRA TransAtlanic921 1500 1710 TSE FRA folowed by going somewhere within 2 hours of Frankfurt. Choices include Baden Baden, Heidleberg, Stuttgart, Mannheim, Mainz Koblenz, and Cologne. I've been to all except Stuttgart(which was visited by an earlier Amazing Race) and all are worth a visit.
May 11 tasks
May 12 release from 36 hour pitstop
May 13 leg 11 FRA PDX 0945 1120 LH 468, then tasks around the Portland area until FINISH LINE

There it is, not the way I would normally do it but if you need to fit 5 legs into 6 days one the few ways that can be done. I will add that I researched all flights from AMS to PDX and from FRA to PDX. There is only one that gave me a morning arrival, LH468 as shown above. Also I did serious research to come up with the two character airline code for Trans Atlantic Airlines, but it appears that there isn't one.

[georgiapeach]

Apskip, great info--thanks for all that!

Adding that I believe the finale to be May 14, not 13 with teams possibly arriving Portland 5/14 AM as is traditionally done?

And wondering if there is any possibility of bringing them in via Vancouver? (pure spec on my part as Vancouver/Victoria would be something I would LOVE to see). I see arr flights at Portland from there, but have no idea if getting teams TO Vancouver is possible!

[patlini]

I think any of the "stans" are a possibility.

Also Georgia and Armenia.

[zackattack308]

apskip, many countries have only had one leg to them - Japan (both times), NZ in TAR5 (though I think we're going there in this race), India recently. It's not a hard and fast rule (though I would love two legs in Kazakhstan).

Other possibilities? more of the Baltic states, Bulgaria, Crete (probably flying from Athens), Romania, Albania.

[apskip]

The possibilities are practically infinite. However, I do know that flights nonstop from Europe to PDX arriving in the morning are exactly two. The first is LH468 from FRA as indicated above(0945 1120). The flights from AMS do not arrive PDX until NW91 1030 1155. Either one of these can be the answer.

There are no non-stop flights from Toronto to Portland. However, there are good connections in the right time frames involving United Airlines:

UA1101 YYZ ORD 0625 0707  connect with UA257 ORD PDX 0801 1023
AC8497 YYZ DEN 0845 1020  connect with  UA369 DEN PDX 1117 1255
UA1103 YYZ ORD 0800 0842  connect with UA1103 ORD PDX 1020 1236

The problem with Toronto is that coming in from FRA there are 6 nonstops, but all arrive in the afternoon. From AMS it's one afternoon and two evening nonstop arrivals for a total of 3.

From Vancouver, the fundamentals are marginal to start with. The distance from Europe to YVR is about the same as to PDX. Flights in to YVR include no nonstops from AMS; there are 2 single-connection in LHR flights. From FRA there is one nonstop into YVR, LH492 1310 1420 but it is not in the right time frame. That arrival is too late to get a full set of tasks done that day and its too early to transfer teams to flights that leave the next morning. I cannot rationalize Vancouver as a transit point or leg stopover for AR13.

[gingerman28]

Like you apskip's, I would love to see the race go to Kazakhstan but wish we had some hard proof, still we can keep our fingers crossed. Its just beautiful from what I've seen

That is where all the Russian space capsuls land.  Maybe some kind of connection.

[apskip]

Because there is a report that teams may have orginated in Moscow, I wanted to check it out. The flights cited in the my most recent post in the spoilers thread, LH 3169 DME FRA and LH468 FRA PDX are the only reasonable choice from Moscow due to minimal (15 hour) flying time in total and to appropriate arrival time (morning).

I also did the same type of analysis for Paris-CDG and for London-Heathrow and Madrid and none had any nonstop flights to PDX. I extended that analysis to several additional major European cities. None has any nonstop flights. That includes Prague, Helsinki, Stockholm and Lisbon. These cities can do a front end flight to connect into LH468 from FRA or NW91 from AMS even though they have no nonstop flights:

Copenhagen SA5639 0700 0840 CPH FRA
Warsaw  KL1362 0645 0835 WAW AMS
Vienna UA8959 0635  0800 VIE FRA
Rome LH3853 0645 0845 FCO FRA  or KL1596 0615 0845 FCO AMS

[apskip]

Like you apskip's, I would love to see the race go to Kazakhstan but wish we had some hard proof, still we can keep our fingers crossed. Its just beautiful from what I've seen

That is where all the Russian space capsuls land.  Maybe some kind of connection.

GMAn, right you are. Its near Almaty which when I was growing up was called Alma Ata and there was a Russian space center there.

[Neobie]

How about this? (This is assuming Dubai and Frankfurt are full destinations.)

ETA: Getting mixed up over India again. Did the teams leave Cambodia on the 6th, arriving in Delhi that evening? And they were seen in Dubai airport by the night of the 7th?

Leg 1		Los Angeles to Sao Paulo to to Salvador		22/23/24 April
Leg 2		Salvador to Fortaleza		25/26 April (speculative end date)
Leg 3		Fortaleza to La Paz (maybe Santa Cruz between)		27/28/29 April
Leg 4		La Paz to Auckland		30 April, 1/2 May
Leg 5		Auckland to Cambodia		3/4 May Extended Pitstop from night of 4th to morning of 6th?
Leg 6		Cambodia to Delhi		6 May
Leg 7		Delhi to Dubai		7 May (speculative end date)
Leg 8		Dubai to somewhere		8/9 May (speculative dates)
Leg 9		Somewhere to Moscow		10 May (speculative dates)
Leg 10		Moscow to somewhere		11/12 May (speculative dates)
Leg 11		Somewhere to Frankfurt to Portland		13/14 May (speculative start date)

[JonLover]

Hi Neobie, I made a statement at the other site about my effort to find out if teams were in Dubai for tasks. I am bringing it here.

I tried solving the question whether TAR13 went to Dubai for tasks or not.

I went around the city by riding a cab. I hailed around 15 taxis just to ask the drivers if they have seen some sort of people running around the city, with backpacks and camera crew running after them.

I went to the Dubai Airport Terminal 1 to ask some of the employees there if there are gossips of TAR coming to the airport. I was a little tame here since I am afraid they might think I am a terrorist.

I went to the famous landmarks of Dubai to ask the people working in the vicinity. I went to Burj Dubai, Burj Al Arab, Souk Madinat, Dubai Marina, Old and New Souq.

But the answer was NONE.

Could it be teams just had connecting flights here? And if the spoiler is right that there is a team of JEWISH FRATS, I doubt if they go to any Arab countries like UAE since it is very risky to enter the country.

Just my thoughts

[apskip]

Neobie, speculation is useful. However your statement "How about this? (This is assuming Dubai and Frankfurt are full destinations.)" is fraught with two major assumptions, both of which I think are likely to be incorrect. Your timetable makes sense only if BOTH assumptions are correct.

[Neobie]

The legs would probably still hold, just with extra destinations slotted in on top of our connection points.

Time is very tight in the second half of the race though...

Speculation? Exactly the way I feel about Kazakhstan.

[puddin]

Don't be too rough on me, I wanted this done before the ugly "BB10" rears its ugly head.
It's not perfect but now we have a base of sorts to work with..........it will be updated when we get more info and when I come across something that was overlooked.

If the slides annoy you press "view all images"

Also the dates on the slideshows are the date they were uploaded by me, not the date they were taken.

[puddin]

 Leg 1


Los Angeles, LAX/ Chicago, ORD 4/22/08
peachs brings us a blog entry
dated 4/22/08:
*"This time, as we were waiting for the team to get checked in at the airport, we got a glimpse of what appeared to be some competitors on The Amazing Race.
*I saw a camera crew shooting two blondes wearing hot pink sweatsuits as they quickly walked outside the terminal. Hmmm, don't think we've ever seen THAT kind of team before on the show (says she with heavy sarcasm).
*A few minutes later, we caught a glimpse of two more pairs

peach contacts the writer of the blog and brings us more details:
*She saw the teams on 4/22 at about 11 AM outside the Delta terminal 5. Looking from inside the terminal out, the teams would have been moving to the right.

Chateau d if does some amazing detective work by visiting LAX and gets details:
* The gal said there was one team that was 'hippie' like with long white hair (she demonstrated with her hands at mid chest level). 
*They were an older couple, as in, male and female.  She estimated their ages to be 40's or 50's.  She also mentioned the two girls and another team that was just a regular young couple in their 20's.
*I just point blank asked "Where were they flying to?"  And he said "Brazil.     Sao Paulo, Brazil"
*He also confirmed the Hippie couple.  They are old enough to be originals from the 60's.
*He said there were 5 teams going via UA and 6 teams via AA.
*So there you have it:   11 teams of two.  Off to their first destination in Sao Paulo.

Thanks to Kogs, do we have our first contestant sighting? -- picture credit flickr ChristiaanV

peach contacts ChristiaanV , he kindly shares more details.
*We saw The Hippies, we saw the Blondes in Pink, and we saw what we would describe as two 23-26 year old "Slacker Dudes"
*This guy was with... what we were guessing his mom

 

 
Rio De Janeiro International Airport 4/24/08

Some new info here:

*From Cordoba, we were to have a stop over in Porto Alegre another stop in Sao Paulo and then arrive in Salvador in the afternoon. Because of fog, the airport in Porto Alegre was closed, so we had to detour to Rio and from there, fly to Salvador, which was actually much more efficient and convenient.
*At the airport in Rio, we noticed several film crews and people in teams of two, often wearing matching outfits.
*These two girls from Texas (according to their t-shirts anyway) were wearing matching black biker shorts, bright pink tank tops and a ton of make-up. I think the t-shirt was pretty accurate.
*Anyway, we noticed them being interviewed by the film crews, acting out dramatic situations and so-on.
*When it came time to board we talked to some of them and lent one of them our brazil book, although they didn..t give us many details about what they were doing.
*There was a delay in taking off and one team asked if they could move closer to the front.
*As soon as they did, all the other contestants tried to do the same.
*It was kind of annoying becuase I think it delayed our take-off even more. Anyway, at that point, we were pretty confident that if it wasn..t The Amazing Race, it was an amazing race of some sort.

 

Salvador de Bahía, Brazil 4/24-4/25/08

Shacklebolt @Twop's, Salvador de Bahía, Brazil April 24th? to April 25th? ,more info throughout this thread.


ART And CULTURE Friday, 25 of April of 2008
It records? of Reality Show it explores points tur?icos of the capital Ascom

*The bahian capital is the scene chosen for the writings of reality American show "the Maratona", an international competition where teams cover some countries fulfilling a series of tasks. The program, that counts today on a hearing of more than 50 million people per year, already is being recorded in some of the main tourist points of Salvador.

*In the morning of this thursday (day 24), the competitors of reality show had had that to go down, in the style rappel, the 70 meters of the Lacerda Elevator. To carry through the test, that called the attention who passed for the place, the filming team installed a net to the long one of the elevator.

*Still inside of the actions of the program, new writings are foreseen tomorrow, of this time in the Maritime Terminal of Salvador, in the Commerce.

* Until the moment, already they had served of location for the international production t
**he Square of the Sé, the Inclined Plan Gonçalves,
**the Order Third of the San Francisco (Historical Center),
**the Slope of the Carmo and the staircase of the Paço .

Chateau d if:
This shot was taken here between 9:45 and 9:59 am (assumes April 24th)



Photos below thanks to schwarzmoor's find and with the help of Neobie, Boingo, and Chateau d if , to name a few ...

 

Map thanks to Boingo

[puddin]

Leg 2

Fortaleza, Brazil 4/25-?/08


 Fortaleza local named Nivaldo who found our site and wanted to help 

Much thanks to our friend Nivaldo

Hi, I'm Nivaldo I'm a painter, I was hired to take part and do to something in amazing race 13.

It was in Fortaleza City Ceará state Brazil.

I really liked to participate in the reality show. I knew Phil and his team and I helped him too because it was raining so much.
I participate as a painter and gave one envelope to each team. You will know that I'm not lying.
You will see my blue uniform.

I painted the letters on the wall because the challenge was to read it all in Portuguese and find the key phrase.

The key phrase was: Cidade Da Crianca (it’s a place in Fortaleza downtown like a big square where the teams need to take a taxi and run to that place to do another challenge, but before they needed to tell me the key and I gave them the envelope.
I’m having difficulty explaining all the details because I’m just learning English and am not good, excuse my mistakes.

I took the picture on April 23rd but they filmed on April 25 in the morning and finished about 2:00pm because I needed to paint it 2 days before and paid me to participate in the filming too.

I never heard of Amazing Race before and they tried to do everything in secret, but during the filming I dressed in a blue painter uniform with some brushes and the teams arrived in a taxi, took the envelope in a red box, I don’t remember what they called that, and they need to find the painter (me) and one of the couple needed to stay beside me and the other run and read all the phases to find the key, he or she ran to tell me the key. That place is located in Metropolitan area of Fortaleza City in a place called “Iparana” Caucaia city near Forrtaleza the capital of Ceara state.

A farm called “Parque De Vaquejada A Ze Gerardo”, the place where they do rodeos but, they filmed outside this place, not inside.

I’m trying to remember all the details …I recall 10 teams.


You can see a picture

I took the picture exactly in the place with this guy called Mike and he worked on the Amazing Race team. You can see the date too.








I asked our friend Nivaldo lots of contestant questions, so here are the ones he was able to answer and so it seems the "Hippies" may have escaped elimination Leg1.

the key as in solving the phrase

Can you recall if the teams were bunched or did they come 1 team at a time?
one team at a time, but some teams had hard job to find the key and were bunched.
 
Can you recall which make of team was first? Which make of team was last?
I remember the first and the last. The first was an old couple and the last was a brown married couple and they had a hard job to find it, the woman waited beside me and the man was looking for the key. I thought he would give up.

Did the teams have a hard time with the phrase? or did any teams speak Portuguese?
heheh...It was so difficult to understand,,no one spoke Portuguese correct, but I understood... 

commercial screencaps
Where are the hippies? thanks kiwijay
Fortaleza airport, thanks Chateau d if

Fortaleza airport taxi, thanks Boingo
Anthony & Stephanie

Roadblock theres Nivaldo!

Tina & Ken

Marisa and Brooke


Detours
Sarah and Terence


Marisa and Brooke

Dan & Andrew



misc~
Toni & Dallas

Aja

Kelly and Christy

Beach, Pecém point thanks the Chateau

[puddin]

Leg 3

La Paz, Bolivia and beyond ..(no photos  )

La Paz, Bolivia 4/28/08


Updates on our life in (La Paz), Bolivia
*ok, fun tidbits now! The day we took possession of our apartment we were crossing the park in front of our building and noticed a lot of people and some really weird all wood bicycles.
*I noticed a lot of the people around them looked like the rich gortex-wearing tourist we see and/or the Discovery Channel crew that worked with us last year.
*Then I noticed it: a yellow signed that said "U-Turn" with a yellow and red flag on it... It was The Amazing Race!!!!! (It's a fun reality show, google it if you don't know what it is) I was sooooooo excited! I was torn between staying there until contestants showed up or going into our apartment. Given Wes' lack of enthusiasm I decided to go back home. But hey, next Amazing Race they will be showing our building and our park!

Update

Hi peach,

sorry I didn't reply earlier, we didn't have any internet access for the last 10 days.
*As for your questions, it's a bit hard to remember (as I'm not as obsessed by details as you guys are!) but we are rather certain we saw the Amazing Race on May 28th in La Paz.
*They were in Plaza Abaroa (sometime called Plaza Avaroa), in the neighborhood of Sopocachi. From our apartment, we also noticed a lot of commotions and big tv lighting in the parc of the Monticulo, near Plaza Espana.
*I am like 80% sure the sign said U-Turn but as soon as I shouted "Oh my god it's the Amazing Race" some of the workers covered the sign. I know it wasn't one of those thing where you can put the picture of another team.
*So just a big yellow sign with the flag beneath it. What else... The bikes were similar to the ones on the picture you sent but less shabby looking. And they were next to wooden head gear with lots of feathers on it. I didn't see any teams. Oh, but also, there were lots of brass bands typical of Bolivia. I'm not sure why they were there.