This show is running on gimmicks and gotten much less interesting. How do you bridge maybe 4000 miles from Cuzco Peru to Rio de Janeiro? If you are the producers of this show, you simply ignore them and hope nobody notices. So, how do you get from Cuzco to Rio on new forms of transportation? You don't; it's that simple. So Rob and Dennis were taken somehow (airplane, anyone?) to Sao Paulo, Brazil and placed on the top of a tall building. I don't think they had officially used an elevator yet, so that would have been possible. However, it's not as photogenic as being lowered on a window washer vehicle down the side of a 25 story building. That doesn't get them any closer to Rio but it does get them off the building.
We discover that, despite his time on various Survivor locations, Rob is not an adventurous eater. Next, they walked (or more likely took an unshown taxi) to the outskirts of a 20+ million metro area to find a truck stock. There they caught a rail train which has maybe 4 hopper cars hooked to a locomotive. That took them maybe 400 miles closer to Rio, only 50 miles away. In that area there was an ostrich farm, so Rob and Dennis had a race with ostriches hooked to a different cart they each sat in and then took that same mode of transportation into the local town. For their next trick they took a harvester aka combine on a sugar cane field and put the collection vehicle and the combine into a race to the lengthy end of that field.
Next, they somehow were allowed to paint the lines of a road with yellow paint, which they botched pretty badly. They found a handcart on railroad tracks that their producers had conveniently arranged to be there. It was easily to move downhill and hard uphill. It got them to the suburbs of Rio on the beach and there there was a waiting swanboat to take them the last segment to Ipanema Beach. However, it was too difficult to navigate in the surf, so they abandoned that. All of a sudden they end up on Sugarloaf Mountain (another instance of cheating, I think). It is possible to get there on 2 cable cars from somewhere in Rio, but not from where Rob and Dennis were. I would have been photogenic, but the producers missed an opportunity there. Finally, they were ready to come down and Rob elected hang gliding, but Dennis would not consider it. He was shown running down (yeah, for how many inches would that be viable?) and then buying up an ice cream cart. He rode that cart to Ipanema Beach and supposedly beat Rob there. I don't believe it. That had to be totally staged, as Rob would have gotten down in any 15 minutes including the mandatory safety lecture. Given the distance, Dennis was just not going to beat him.
This is the summary of the new forms of transportation:
10. Window Washer Vehicle
11. Rail train
12. Ride an ostrich cart
13. Combine/Harvester
14. Paint road lines
15. Handcart
16. Swanboat
17. Hang gliding (Rob only)
18. Ice Cream cart (Dennis only)