Hi guys, Glamazon Racer here and I'm honoured to have been asked to guest judge on this amazing game once again!
Firstly, sorry to see the eliminated contestants go home. Those who had to withdraw, thanks for your great designs in Round 1 and sorry that you were unable to continue in the competition. Hopefully we'll see you back again sometime! BourkieBoy, you did a great job too and thanks for being part of this season. Hopefully you'll be back to design again in the future and hopefully you've picked up some great pointers along the way!
Reading Peach's post about her time in Africa was just the perfect way to kick off this round and just stirs up so many emotions and memories! I definitely feel compelled to share some of my own experiences as well, just to set the mood!
I couldn't have asked for a better round in which to be invited to guest judge. I had the pleasure of travelling through four countries in East Africa last year which was an amazing experience. I'm going to blab on a little bit about my experience, since Peach's post resonates so deeply with my own love for the continent, so I'll just leave that all here in a spoiler tag for anyone who cares to read about it, and I'll leave the important stuff outside the spoiler tag below.
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Kenya was my first stop in Africa. I've never met people more happy in the world than the Kenyans. Everyone just wanted to chat and made me feel right at home despite being in a very different sort of place! Security getting in and out of places in Nairobi was intense but even the security guards just wanted to ask me where I was from and upon seeing the jersey I was wearing, just have a chat about football while my bags went through the scanners. Visiting an elephant orphanage and a giraffe sanctuary were also real highlights, getting up close and personal with these amazing creatures.
Uganda may share a border with Kenya but for all intents and purposes, it was another planet. A wonderful tour guide we had been referred to by a friend took us on a day long trip from the airport. It was quite an eye-opening experience witnessing the living conditions of the people and experiencing the intense Kampala traffic which is unlike anything in the world. The highlight was definitely visiting the mosque that TAR31 visited and retracing the steps up the minaret that plagued Rachel & Elissa. I can personally confirm that the answer is indeed 272! Yes, I counted them.
We participated in a small project with a charity and got to see a Kampala slum firsthand. Having tiny little children running up just to say hello is such a touching experience. Two days of trying to live and move around Kampala felt like a lifetime - life is just so difficult there, even for a couple days. But the experience is something I wouldn't trade for the world and definitely changed my perception on many things.
Any preconceived notions I had about Africa were thrown out the window when we touched down in Kigali, Rwanda. Once again, it was wildly different to either of the previous two countries and parts of the city felt as developed as any first world country. Rwanda has always been somewhere I dreamed about visiting, having bounced back from a terrible genocide in 1994, the year I was born. I've had the pleasure of visiting genocide memorials in Armenia, Israel and Bosnia & Herzegovina previously and Rwanda stirred up all of the same emotions. However, seeing how the country has bounced back in 25 short years is truly a beacon of hope for the rest of the world. Also, staying in the one and only Hotel Rwanda was truly the most special place I've ever stayed!
Rwanda gave us a safari experience to remember! I won't harp on about the typical magical safari experiences but having our car get stuck in a hole in the middle of a national park and having to get outside with wild zebras frolicking a few hundred metres away was something that was definitely not on the itinerary!
A few near-death experiences later (including our car lights failing on the dark drive home and ending up stuck in a ditch in the middle of absolutely nowhere) and we truly got to experience how helpful the locals were, helping us out of multiple sticky situations and allowing us to finally return to the relative familiarity of the capital.
Tanzania was the last stop and a week in the country barely scraped the surface of what it has to offer. There probably aren't too many people who go to Tanzania and don't visit Kilimanjaro or the Serengeti but that was me! Dar Es Salaam has so much to offer in itself and Zanzibar would have to be one of my favourite places on earth. The island life was a pleasant and relaxing way to end our time in Africa, after all the chaos and near-death experiences. I would love to go back to Tanzania and spend a month or two there - as I said, it has so much to offer and my one week barely made a start on it.
In addition to my travels last year, I've also spent plenty of time while being stuck at home this year researching other parts of the continent and planning subsequent trips, ready to go back to this incredible continent when travel becomes possible again. I've learned about many fascinating countries and cultures, both from travelling there and also through research. Africa stole my heart and I love everything it has to offer. I can't wait to be able to spend more time there.
Africa has so much to offer and TAR has done a reasonable job of showcasing it when it goes to Africa. However, I always feel that the race hasn't spent as much time in Africa as it should've and some of their visits have only scraped the surface of what the particular country has to offer. As such, there is SO much room for creativity and ingenuity with this round and you guys have the chance to come up with something truly special.
Personally, I don't mind whether you are designing in a location that TAR has visited, a location I have visited or somewhere entirely different, but I hope you can show us what that location has to offer.
Cultural relevance is always my top criteria when critiquing a design and that will hold even more importance for me now, after having experienced a small portion of what this continent has to offer firsthand.
I'll give you an outline of my marking criteria for this round to give you an idea of what to expect and what I'm looking for:
Cultural Relevance: How relevant your leg and the various tasks are to the culture of the country/region you are designing in -
15 pointsRoadblock: Self-explanatory, the quality of the Roadblock will be judged -
5 pointsDetour: Each side of the Detour will be worth 5 points, with points deducted if the Detour seems unbalanced -
10 pointsFast Forward: Looking for a great task but also something that deserves being a Fast Forward and not just any other task, either due to difficulty or accessibility or any other factors -
5 pointsCreativity/Originality: How creative/original your tasks are as a whole -
5 pointsUtilisation of World Heritage Site: Obviously you guys have been asked to design in one of the World Heritage Sites and this score will be based on how well you incorporate that Site into your design -
5 pointsLeg Flow/Excitement: How well your leg flows as a whole and how exciting it would be to watch your leg and your tasks on TV -
5 pointsI really can't wait to see your designs and I'm so excited to read them and judge them. If you have any questions about what I'm looking for, feel free to ask away and I'll endeavour to respond at my earliest convenience.
