To U-turn or not to U-turn, that is the question. And the answer to the question left Art & JJ fuming. The six remaining teams were warned as they set off that a “Double U-Turn” was in play in this eighth leg.
Rachel and Dave – the winners of the last leg – were the first team to set out with instructions to “Take a drive through Africa’s Garden of Eden.”What followed was a memorable drive for all teams through Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Crater, which allowed them to briefly forget about the race and focus instead on the amazing array of wildlife native to this part of Africa. Elephants, lions, zebras and baboons (or bamboons as army wife Rachel calls them) and even a few animals that the Kentucky buddies Bopper and Mark had never seen before dominated the landscape. It was such a moving experience that even Vanessa was speechless. But once the contestants reached the town of Safari Junction, the race was back on.
The detour for this leg of the race gave the teams the option between “Water Supply” and “Air Supply”. In “Water Supply” teams had to wait in line with the locals at the village’s communal well and fill nine containers with water and deliver them to the home of a local family. In “Air Supply” teams assisted a local bicyle repair shop. With bikes being the top mode of transportation for the locals, fixing flat tires is a booming business.
The first two teams to arrive at the detour – Rachel and Dave and Bopper and Mark – wisely opted to fix a few flat tires and quickly completed the detour. Art and J.J picked water over air. But although it sounded simple and straight-forward, they didn’t factor on how much time would be lost waiting in line for their turn with the water hose which ended up being about half an hour wait time.
That left Rachel and Dave with the first opportunity to U-turn another team (forcing a trailing team to complete both ends of a detour). Although they had a pact with Art and J.J. that whoever arrived at the U-turn first would pick on Team Big Brother (Brendon and Rachel), they decided not to pull the trigger. When Art & JJ showed up at the U-turn they figured they were in first place because they didn’t see Brendon and Rachel’s picture on the U-turn video board. There was no way Rachel and Dave would have gone back on their word had they arrived at the U-turn first, right? Wrong.
“I don’t feel like talking to them ever again,” J.J. pouted when they finally figured out what had happened. “I don’t give a crap … Art and I just need to do our thing and win the race.” And with that said the fragile alliance between this season’s two-dominate teams was over.
Bopper and Mark took advantage of the drama caused by the fractured alliance to win their first leg of the race – “Kentucky is in the house!” – as they made quick work of the Road Block (collect 500-grams of honey from a bee hive wearing the correct protective gear) and survived the foot race to the pit stop at Lake Manyara. Rachel and Dave finished a close second.
Nary and Jamie – the federal agents posing as kindergarten teachers in an effort to fly under the radar – made a good effort to overcome a three-hour time gap with the bulk of the pack to start the leg. They were given new life when both Brendon and Rachel (U-turned by Art and J.J.) and Vanessa and Ralph (U-turned by Big Brother) had to deal with the dreaded double U-turn, but it still wasn’t enough time to catch up and they were eliminated from the race.
1. Bopper and Mark (won a trip to HAWWII)
2. Rachel and Dave
3. Art and J.J
4. Brendon and Rachel
5. Vanessa and Ralph
6. Nary and Jamie – Eliminated
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