13 teams, 12 legs, 7 countries, ~22,000 miles of air travel, and two crossings of the Pacific Ocean.
Starting Line: Alaska 360’s Dredge Town, Skagway, Alaska, United States
At the Starting Line, teams receive clues based on either the fur color, leash color, facial markings, or names of huskies and have to identify a husky in the kennel that was part of an (imaginary?) Iditarod team (task inspo from BB Reindeer Games Ep 4 Naughty/Nice Challenge)
1. Skagway, Alaska to Carcross, Yukon: Based on the order of finishing the Starting Line Task, teams are assigned different cars on the
White Pass & Yukon Route Railway to Carcross. Once in Carcross, teams play beach volleyball in the Carcross Desert, row to floating clues on Bennett Lake (including an optional plunge into the cold water to swim to an Express Pass), and match English and Coastal Tagish names. KOR & NEL.
2. Carcross, Yukon to Skagway, Alaska: At the Caribou Crossing Trading Post, teams pack Conestoga wagons according to an example, face a Roadblock at Skydive Yukon, and begin the drive back to Skagway, stopping at the
Yukon Suspension Bridge in British Columbia. Teams’ final task in Skagway, finishing off this Wild West/Gold Rush pair of legs, is a Detour between gold panning and burlesque dancing. Ideally, Leg 1 starts at dawn and producers can take advantage of the summertime midnight sun to get two legs shot in a single day.
3. Skagway to Seoul, South Korea: Because Korea is criminally under visited. Building Korean swings, taekwondo, and a K-POP routine a la TAR30 in Zimbabwe before subjecting teams to hell on the N Seoul Tower love locks.
4. Seoul to Gyeongju, South Korea: Seokguram Grotto; a game of tuho deciding which side of a
Chuseok Detour teams complete; and a riddle leading teams to the Pit Stop at Cheomseongdae.
5. Gyeongju to Sado Island, Japan: Teams travel by ferry to Fukuoka, and train to Niigata, and ferry (again) to
Sado Island; 1 flight in 5 (soon to be 6) legs to make up for added costs due to two trans-Pacific flights. Detour relating to taiko drumming or rowing
Tarai Bune tub boats, sake tasting Roadblock, and an ARI relating to Niigata prefecture’s
Wara rice straw sculptures.
6. Sado Island, Japan: Teams Face-Off in drama stacking, match Noi theatre masks, hang carp streamers, and enter the Sado Gold Mine to collect Tokugawa-era Japanese coins. Pit Stop at the Futatsugame Beach tombolo.
7. Sado Island to Papeete, Tahiti, France: Teams fly from Narita. Rather than focusing on the beach elements of French Polynesia, I’d like to use this leg to explore the
Heiva Festival. Teams learn a dance or make intricate costumes for another. The Roadblock sees one team member compete in three coconut-related sports: climbing a coconut tree, throwing a javelin at a suspended coconut, and copra harvesting, in which teams use a stone axe to cut open a pile of coconuts to extract its fiber. Pit Stop in Tahiti’s mountains.
8. Papeete to Rapa Nui, Chile: In a world where the Papeete-Easter Island-Santiago transoceanic flight is back and this season is built around taking advantage of it. Teams build an
Umu earth oven and have
Tu’u haino ino tattoos applied to their backs, serving as a map to direct them around the Rano Raraku crater. KOR but elimination since the only NEL was in Leg 1.
9. Rapa Nui to Santiago, Chile: A logistical necessity. The KOR last leg was strictly to allow for filming and teams to get on the next day’s Rapa Nui-Santiago flight. Hopefully this is better than past Santiago legs (and I don’t have high hopes for TAR36’s visit). Teams earn money as
Chinchineros, memorize Pablo Neruda poems, and face a seafood market Detour where they either stack prickly sea urchins or fold seaweed into
Cochayuyo cubes.
10. Santiago to Bogotá, Colombia: Another attempt to make up for past visits that didn’t do the country justice. Teams start the leg by playing Tejo against each other, aiming their discs at targets with the other teams’ faces. Teams then depart based on the cumulative scores against them. Tasks pay homage to Bogota’s nickname, the “Athens of South America,” the gold Muisca
Tunjo zoomorph sculptures (with a larger-than-life puzzle), and Colombian gastronomy.
11. Bogotá to Medellín & Guatapé, Colombia: I have a soft spot for these cities (and, like Santiago, am wary of the upcoming visits). Teams go on a walking graffiti tour in Comuna Trece, choose between making and
selling arepas or decorating for the Medellín flowers festival, and climb up the Piedra del Peñol to spot the Pit Stop before rappelling down and kayaking across the Guatapé reservoir to reach it.
12. Medellín to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Teams calculate the value of beef at the
largest cattle market on earth, tune banjos at the American Banjo Museum, navigate the Oklahoma City Underground, and honor to the 39 tribes of Oklahoma at the First Americans Museum before finishing on the grounds of the Vien Giac Buddhist Temple in Northeast Oklahoma City (not too much in terms of parks or landmarks that offer private-like spaces).
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