The Amazing Race > The Amazing Race Discussion

Run out of countries?

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G.B.:
Has the race finally run out of countries to visit for good?

TAR (The American version) has not visited a new country since Paraguay and Azerbaijan in Season 20 (unless you count French Polynesia, which is a part of France). Since then we've had nothing but repeats.

Overall, TAR as a franchise has not visited a new country since TAR Australia 2 visited Cuba (unless you count Curacao, which is a part of the Netherlands)

Do you think there are any further countries they could believably go to? Unlike the wishlist thread, here I'm more talking about logistics and what countries production would physically be able to go to safely and without issue.

Hysha:
Sure.
Andorra. They can do an all leg in Andorra, or for example: Spain - Andorra - France, because is a little country.
Laos. Is so beautiful. They can replace some Thailand legs for Laos. xD
I'm thinking about Latvia, Belarus, Moldova... but with the Ukraine-Russia problem... Maybe it's not the safest place.
I'm sure some African countries can being a cool destination. The same with "Oceanic islands" (Fiji, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea...)
And finally, Honduras, Nicaragua... they are nice places to go.

kiki:
Slovakia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia- Herzegovina, Israel, Jordan. Even if the last four are on some forbidden list or nor the rest are pretty safe even by American standards.

Zack.:
wrt Israel, I think any version that attempted to go there would have to build their route about it (TARI is obvious, TARAus had several legs in SE / South Central Asia and in central Europe).

I think Caribbean legs might be the next frontier; it wouldn't be difficult to have a flight from the overseeing country to the island (so Netherlands to Curacao, France to Martinique, etc) and I think they're reasonably connected to the US so as to be the penultimate leg but the issue then becomes what could they do? Curacao would be a good country though if TARLA is any indication I'm very much concerned about the execution.

I think Angola is a little lacking in internal infrastructure, but I think it's well enough connected (to Europe, within Africa and even to SA through Brazil) and has enough to do to warrant a leg or two.

theschnauzers:
Myanmar is also a possibility.

The problem seems to be two-fold, maybe three fold. Some nations remain on the State Department Travel Advisory list, including some places TAR US has visited in the past such as Libya and Ukraine, for example. Other possible countries have become safer, but there may be concerns about being able to produce a leg ar two in those countries.

The second problem is have local production staffing available, TAR has not been to much of Africa since the death of a local producer who was based in South Africa and was in Kenya making production arrangements for another show a couple of years ago. That may be one reason why central and southern Africa have not been utilized in recent seasons.

The third reason may be that TAR US has become reliant on national tourism ministries and agencies to help arrange locations and tasks in order to facilitate being able to film in those countries.

One has to remember that all of the contestants and many of the traveling production team travel on US passports, and have to meet any local visa and other requirements imposed on US originating travelers. There are countries that impose more rigid requirements on US passport holders because of the post 9/11 security measure imposed by the US on nationals of certain other countries.

The other thing is that even when an area had settled down, the producers tend to wair a couple of years before considering those countries for future races. (Sri Lanka and its civil war only ended a couple of years ago, for instance.) And then, there's now the Sharia problem in some Islamic majority countries, and the anti0GBLT legislation in Russia and some African nations. The rigidity of these new laws also may make it difficult for TAR to plan to go to those places for the foreseeable future.

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