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Leg 24.09 – “Ayokong mabaon ng mga pakwan. Hindi ko pinangarap iyon.”
It’s time for the teams to return home! Teams depart from Taiwan and fly back to New Manila International Airport before being driven to MacArthur Landing Park in Dagupan City, Pangasinan, the Pit Start of the Leg.
Teams will depart the Pit Start in the order they arrived at the last Pit Stop. Teams will choose a brand-new 2024 Kia Seltos and drive themselves to this Salt Farm in Dasol.
Dasol is known for its traditional salt-making industry and has been a vital part of the local economy for generations with methods passed down through families. And here teams will encounter the Detour: Rake or Take.
In Rake, teams must harvest salt from large evaporation ponds or salt beds by raking them into piles. When they harvested enough salt, they will go to another pile that’s been drying and pack the salt into baskets. When they carry the baskets to the waiting truck, they will receive the next clue.
In Take, teams must dig through mounds of harvested salt to search for two puzzle pieces that will form the detour icon. When they’ve found the two pieces and take them to the farmer, they will receive the next clue.
This is also the Trigger Point for this Leg of the Race. If an equal number of teams complete the Detour, the U-Turn or Yield will be activated on the next Leg.
After the Detour, teams must drive to this Watermelon Farm in Bani for a Roundabout!
The first task requires teams to harvest different varieties of watermelons and then replicate an example watermelon pyramid with a specific design.
The other task will be a modified Switchback to one of the most infamous and frustrating TARPHDME Double Road Blocks: Eyes or Mouth!
For this Double Road Block, teams will need to distinguish between the different varieties of watermelons. The team member who will use their Mouth will be blindfolded. Their Eyes partner will guide them through different watermelon varieties, having the Mouth team member the taste of the fruit while describing how it looks and its name. When they feel ready, the Mouth team member will go to a table of watermelons, remove their blindfold and then identify the watermelons by name based on their taste.
After the Roundabout, teams must drive to Alaminos City and choose a marked boat which will take them to Hundred Islands National Park!
Teams must find Imelda Cave on Marcos Island.
Here, teams must jump off the cliff to retrieve a pouch on a buoy and the next clue in the water below.
Teams must then swim to waiting kayaks and row themselves to this specific island and search for two more pouches and their next clue.
Teams must now choose a jetski and follow a rudimentary map to search nearby islands for two other pouches and two halves of the next clue.
That clue directs teams to find Pilgrimage Island where they will encounter a Road Block: Who can piece it together?
For this Road Block, teams must now open the pouches which contain puzzle pieces. They must assemble the puzzle which will reveal the location of the Pit Stop: Cuenco Cave.
When their puzzle is approved, teams can jetski to Cuenco Cave on Governor’s Island.
The first team to check-in here will win P200,000 courtesy of Shell V-Power Nitro+.
The last team to check-in here WILL be eliminated.
“Director’s” Commentary
I think this can be a great Leg! So, last season, I had the first mid-Race return to the Philippines. Partly because I wanted to have mid-Race Legs in Japan. But also to feature a Leg in the Philippines that wasn’t a first or finale Leg.
I decided to do it again this season. Partly to facilitate the use of the charter plane with our wonderful air travel partners Philippine Airlines and Cebu Pacific. And also to again have a mid-Race Leg in the Philippines with lots of teams.
Pangasinan is a great province that I’ve wanted to visit on TARPHDME for a while. Of course, it was visited in the real TARPH. And this Leg really focuses on points of interest and things that the province is known for.
First, if there’s a salt farm nearby, then that’s a perfect and easy location for a task. And that applies to anywhere in the world. Hehe. The Detour is straightforward. Salt harvesting on one side. And on the other, a needle in a haystack challenge. What we would hope is that the physical side of the harvesting will match well with the luck task on the other.
Next is a visit to a watermelon farm. As I have had Pangasinan as a potential Final Leg location for a long time, I had the watermelon pyramid task be a Final Memory Task. Something with having to stack watermelons to correspond to Leg numbers or something like that. But since we are now visiting Pangasinan in the middle of the Race, it’s now a regular task with no memory element.
I’ve become accustomed to plugging in Roundabouts where a Leg might be a bit flat. Lol So this is a good spot for one with the watermelon stacking and then the tasting. I saw that they grow different varieties here. So while this is not the usual version of this Double Road Block (with flower smells or coffee smells, etc), it is a good one to have as a Roundabout. My question though is with our Interchange, teams really could cheat their way out of the Double Road Block by using it. I hope not! Hehe. But it’s possible unless we prohibit the teams from doing so.
Next, we can’t come to Pangasinan without visiting the Hundred Islands. I wasn’t sure about the kinds of tasks we could do just from Google Scouting. But I would think some kind of island hopping would be good. Something with swimming (since, *spoileralert* we have a lack of tropical/water Legs this season). Cliff jumping of course is an easy Active Route Info task.
So I did this whole puzzle pouch thing to justify the island hopping and get teams in and out of the water. First with kayaks and then jetskis. What we hope is this can generate some good excitement and upsets on the way to the Pit Stop!
Overall, I think this can be a really great Leg. I enjoy being able to feature some mid-Race Legs in the Philippines since no other TAR will do so. hehehe
Hundred Islands is a great location for Amazing Race
We’ll never see it in real life though lol