The remaining teams from The Amazing Race headed to Botswana where they completed challenges that required hand-eye-coordination and patience. The teams met up with the The Kalahari Bushmen, some of the native inhabitants of Botswana. In one of the more humorous challenges, the Bushmen took each team to a hole in the ground. The team had to catch one of the Bushmen’s best friends, a scorpion. The teams then had to put the scorpion in a jar.  Sometimes the Bushmen placed the scorpion in their mouths to pacify it. This action elicited to funny reactions from the teams, because they didn’t know what the Bushmen were sucking on the scorpions.

 

Scorpion by Enygmatic-Halycon

 

When these ingenious locals placed a scorpion in Joey’s hands (Joey is a YouTuber with a huge following) Joey nearly fainted. The Bushmen joked in their language, and said that he was very scared. Speaking of funny situations, country singing beauty, Caroline’s mind was off in La La Land, but in actuality she was in Botswana where a very real lion was a few feet away. The sharp-eyed Bushmen saw the lion and scrambled up a tree, while Caroline said things like, Wow, you can climb, as the Bushman looked down at her from the safety of the tree. One of the Bushmen told her in his language that a lion was near, but poor Caroline had no idea of what he was trying to tell her. Thanks to the magic of television, viewers could read the subtitled translation. Caroline said out loud that maybe she should have climbed the tree after him, and after watching the episode of The Amazing Race, she’s probably glad that she didn’t see that lion.

 

Bushmen
Photo by David Barrie

 

During another scene with the Bushmen and the teams had either build a fire with a stick and manure or they could choose to build a trap that could catch a fowl. Notably, most of the teams had trouble building the fire. The Bushmen made building the fire look so easy. Several of the teams gave up and went to catch a fowl, which was probably easier, but not exactly a piece of cake. The team from Alabama made this challenge look easy, because Chuck often made traps as a youth. Although Chuck and Wynona came in last during the previous leg, they finished in third place for this particular leg.  The hockey players, Bates and Anthony finished in first place, followed by Pam and Winnie. Newlyweds Max and Katie finished last, but lucky for them, this was a non-elimination leg.

 

Botswana Image by the U.S. Army