The Amazing Race Philippines: Redemption (DryedMangoez Edition 12) – Leg 12 – Cagayan, Philippines


IntroductionLeg 1Leg 2Leg 3Leg 4Leg 5Leg 6Leg 7Leg 8ALeg 8BLeg 9Leg 10Leg 11Leg 12


Leg 12 – “This is our last second chance.”

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This is it! The final three teams will find out if they will rewrite their Amazing Race Philippines history and take care of their unfinished business as they fly to their Final Destination, Cagayan!

Teams will fly from Bangkok to Manila and be shuttled to a charter flight to Cagayan’s capital and the (literally) hottest city in the country, Tuguegarao.

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Teams will find their next clue on the tarmac of Tuguegarao Airport and their first task of the Final Leg.

Teams have been on many flights this Race, racked up plenty of frequent flier miles and spent a lot of time in the sky. For this task, teams will need to figure out exactly how much time that is.

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Using provided flight schedules and a time zone map to convert local times, teams must calculate the duration of each flight they would need to reach the cities they’ve visited (by plane) on this Race. Once they’ve correctly totaled those flight times, they will receive the next clue.

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Teams must now travel by tricycle to the Cagayan Provincial Capitol building where they will pick up a sealed envelope and their next clue.

Tuguegarao is a quickly growing city with multiple large developments springing up around the area. The heat and the always busy streets make for an already bustling urban center in the midst of vast farmland. And on those roads, alongside modern cars and classic tricycles and jeepneys are the traditional Philippine kalesa.

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For this task, teams must finish assembling one of the Tuguegarao kalesas and pull it down Enrile Avenue to Tuguegarao City Hall where they will exchange it for their next clue.

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That clue tells teams to look for a flagged field near the Cagayan-Apayao Road junction in Solana.

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Here, teams must choose five carabao and safely cross them from a small watering hole to a nearby field for grazing in order to receive their next clue.

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Teams must now head back to the Buntun Bridge where they will find the Final Task of the Race, a Double Road Block: Up High or Down Low

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For this Double Road Block, teams will relive their time on the Race and must recall certain tasks and Route Markers in order to fill a large gameboard hanging from Buntun Bridge. The gameboard has 10 slots marked with symbols for either a Route Info, Detour or Road Block.

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The team member who will remain Down Low will travel by boat to an island under Buntun Bridge and in the middle of the Cagayan River where they must search amongst 154 clueboxes for 10 pictures from the previous 11 Legs that will fulfill 10 requirements/descriptions of Route Markers (contained in the folder they received at the capitol). Teams will see that two slots must be filled with a Detour task, five must be Route Info Tasks and three must be Road Blocks. There can only be one task used from each Leg and with only ten slots, one Leg will not be represented on the gameboard.

The team member who will be Up High must rappel down from the Buntun Bridge roadway, receive each picture from their teammate and climb back up to the gameboard to place them into the slots.

The requirements and solutions are:
1. Task involving delivering food. (Leg 6 Christmas Carry Detour delivering pretzels.)
2. Task involving delivering goods. (Leg 9 Raw Delivery Detour delivering copper.)
3. Task involving delivering an animal. (Leg 4 Route Info task delivering donkeys.)
4. Task involving heights. (Leg 1 Petronas Towers Road Block.)
5. Task involving a bottle. (Leg 11 Route Info task finding Sanctuary of Truth bottle art.)
6. Task involving non-delivered food. (Leg 2 shawarma spit Road Block.)
7. Task involving a performance. (Leg 7 Figure Skating Route Info.)
8. Task requiring something to be assembled. (Leg 5 Eiffel Tower assembly & delivery Route Info task.)
9. Task involving water. (Leg 3 Dead Sea Scrolls Road Block.)
10. Task involving a globe. (Leg 8 Clementinum Library Route Info.)
There is no task used from Leg 10.

Teams may fill in the gameboard in any order they choose. But they can only retrieve one picture at a time. Once a correct picture has been placed on the board, a green light will appear under that slot. Once all ten lights have been lit green, teams will be given their next clue.

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That clue tells teams to choose a marked Kia K2700 flatbed truck which they must direct to the town of Piat where they must find this flagged building in the vicinity of Our Lady of Piat.

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The cluebox found here will tell teams that they can now run up the hill to Basilica Minore of Our of Lady of Piat, the Finish Line!

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The first team to cross the Finish Line will win all of these wonderful prizes from our wonderful sponsors:

But the biggest prize of all is: REDEMPTION! WOOHOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“Director’s” Commentary

Wow!!!

What a finale, eh? So, like many of the Legs I’ve cobbled together in recent “seasons,” I usually have one location or task in a city that I want to build a Leg around. It was certainly true for this Leg, which I came up with after my family’s trip to the Philippines last May. My family is from Cagayan and Kalinga provinces, so unlike most of the destinations on TARPHDME, I actually have “scouted” locations here. lol

Our family usually crosses the Buntun Bridge on our way to either Tabuk, Kalinga or Our of Lady of Piat. And the little swath of land in the middle of the Cagayan River always reminded me of TAR13’s Final memory Task with that field of clueboxes. I thought this would be a perfect location for such a task.

After crossing the Buntun Bridge on the way to Piat, I noticed the carabao crossing at the road junction in Solana and thought that would make another great task. And finally the last run up the steep hill to the front entrance of Our Lady of Piat church would be a perfect Finish Line. (It was also a possible Starting Line at one point in pre-production. Hehe.)

So that’s basically how this Leg first started out. Me thinking about possible TARPHDME tasks during my family’s almost-annual vacations back home. lol

Anyway, let’s rewind to the start of the Leg first. Admittedly, there didn’t seem to be much else to do in Tuguegarao that hadn’t already been done in TARPHDM1. Or at least, things to do within a reasonable distance and for a finale. There are plenty of interesting locations and possible tasks in nearby Iguig or Penablanca (Hello Callao Caves!). But with the horrible traffic of Tuguegarao? It would likely be a logistical clusterfrak and end up a horrible Final Leg.

In thinking about extra tasks this Leg, I though a task right at the airport would be interesting. I immediately remembered TAR Canada 3’s airport tarmac task, so I took it and stole it and made it much better here. lol Instead of providing GMT conversions, why not just give teams a simple time zone map and let them figure that out themselves. Teams needing to find the cities on the map and then trying to calculate the time differences and whatnot.

A note, teams won’t be told that they must convert times. They’ll just be given the information that the schedules are in local time so they’ll have to realize they need the provided time zone map. You never know with TAR teams. lol

Additionally, this would either be an AMAZING, dramatic task or a complete flop that is over and done with in 2 TV minutes. Hopefully it’s the former. Hehe.

Also, I’m not sure if I should forbid teams from helping each other. Only because I don’t know how difficult this task could be. On one hand, helping each other would add more drama because there’s always the possibility that the helped team may overtake the one who helped them and win. Then there’s the team that did it on their own, but still made it to the Finish Line either in a comeback victory or a blowout loss.

At the same time, I don’t want one clever team to just run away with it right at the start if this task ends up too tricky. Should be interesting to see play out.

Next, the provincial capitol, a TARPHDM1 Pit Stop, is one of the few TV-ready locations in Tuguegarao. (With 4K UHD drone footage, duh!) So I originally only had teams picking up the envelope here before them heading to Solana. But the next task was supposed to be staged at some place called the “Southern Cagayan Research Center” which I’d seen along the way in Solana. I’d later find they cultivated mushrooms there, but when I looked more into it as I was finalizing this Route, I saw that the Research Center was actually in Iguig, on the other side of Tuguegarao. So either they moved from Solana since May or I don’t even know, but I scrapped this task about setting up mushroom fruiting bags. I already thought it was a boring task anyway. lol

So thinking about what could possibly be done in Tuguegarao, I thought of doing something at the capitol. I remembered kalesas are widely used in the city still, so hey, why not a simple assemble and DELIVER!!!! task here. This ends up being a good physical task (in the Tuguegarao heat!) to contrast the two big thinking tasks.

Next up, again, I’d merely seen carabaos crossing the road, so why not have teams do that too.

And finally, the Double Road Block. I feel like this is a huge undertaking. But it would be an absolutely stunning Final Task. It does require closing one lane of Buntun Bridge and that would surely cause as much chaos to area traffic as Chris Christie and Bridgegate. But this is TARPHDME! Anything is possible!

Instead of just recycling TAR13’s task as it is, I thought why not add in the rapelling and the gameboard, slightly larger, hanging from the bridge. It won’t be so big that other teams will be able to see your pictures up on the board. So no chance of just copying. But of course there’s still the need for teams to run around the clueboxes to find the right pictures.

And that’s in addition to figuring out the requirements which is very similar to TARPHDM1’s final memory task as well, which was in turn inspired by TAR12’s infamous Final Road Block. I hope these requirements are tricky enough. Of course, there’s several tasks that fill each requirement (DELIVERY! DELIVERY!! DELIVERY!!!). But there will only be one correct list of solutions.

The Kia K2700, I guess, is Kia’s version of the Isuzu ELF flatbed truck which is used as a common form of familial transportation in the Philippine provinces. Like our family’s own “ELF”:
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This is a pic from 2012. It’s been spruced up since then.

And yes, people do ride on the back of that thing. Take a look at my family heading to Tuguegarao to catch our flight back to Manila:


Fun! lol

Finally, the Finish Line at Our Lady of Piat. No question, it’s a great location. But from Buntun Bridge to Piat is about a 30-40 minute drive. That’s a little long for the final stretch. But again, we don’t have very many options here other than random rice fields or school gymnasiums. lol The Capitol could be reused. And the Callao Caves were another option, but it’s even farther away. Having teams run up that hill (and it is VERY steep) to the church would make for some great shots. (And yes, the 4K UHD drone would be put to good use here.)

The highlights of this Leg should be the two thinking tasks though. Both look amazing on paper. And overall, this should be a challenging Leg worthy of a returning Racers season.

For this season overall, I think I maybe got a little lazy with all the delivery tasks. It would’ve been okay if all those deliveries came back to be an important part of this Final Leg. At least, more than just those mentions in the Double Road Block. A more creative task may be out there somewhere in which we incorporate all the deliveries teams made this season.

But otherwise, this is a solid route with some great tasks and nice visits to Jordan and Nepal. It was also fun to post the Legs weekly in what would have been The Amazing Race 29‘s Friday slot instead of the daily binge watch TARPHDME usually “airs.” 😉

And so that brings us to the end of The Amazing Race Philippines: Redemption (DryedMangoez Edition Season 12).

HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT THOUGH!
Season 13 is coming up at the end of January 2017. And it’s going to have a HUGE, SHOCKING twist! Six brand-new Filipino teams will be racing against… SIX INTERNATIONAL ALL-STARS!!! What?!?!

The Amazing Race Philippines vs. The World Premieres Friday, January 20, 2017!
Of course, exclusively on DryedMangoez.com!

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