By M. Giant
The race is really in no hurry at all to get out of Belgium, is it? In addition to their clues at the start of the leg, racers are given wacky costumes and are expected to dress up as characters from Tintin and wander around the streets of Brussels in the wee hours of the morning, trying to find a Tintin-looking dude and figure out who they're supposed to be. After completing this bit of cross-marketing (which the snowboarders do more slowly than anyone else), they finally get out of the country.
Everyone hops the same train to Amsterdam and flies thence to Panama City, Panama. A long taxi ride later, they find their way to longboats that carry them to a village under cover of darkness. Once they arrive, they sign up to get tattoos painted on their arms at specific times early the morning, twenty minutes apart. The tattoos turn out to be clues sending them back to San Francisco Bay Towers in Panama City. So it's back to town, with the snowboarders in the lead as usual. The towers are the setting for a "tightrope-walking" Roadblock 35 stories up. Andy does well and Sandy faces her fear of heights, both with the help of ample harnesses and safety cables.
From there, they have to get to a certain statue, which most of the teams' cabdrivers collaborate on finding. For the Detour, they have to either distribute seafood among vendors at a fish market or go make sandals out of leather and straps. Cindy and Amani also handle the Roadblock well, and everyone save Amani and Marcus chooses the shoemaking Detour option. Team NFL ends up there anyway, much to their chagrin, especially given that they're already in last place. Yet they insist on going to the other one anyway and carrying large amounts of raw seafood by hand.
Andy and Tommy are still in the lead after the Detour, and their clue sends them to Cathedral Square. There, dancing women are wearing elaborately decorated dresses, one of which has the words "Panama Viejo" printed on the skirt and a picture of the aforementioned site on their medallions, not that the racers know this. Andy and Tommy misread the clue and try to go to "Balboa," and wind up at the canal before being sent to the statue of Balboa, neither of which is in sight of the Pit Stop.
Meanwhile the other three teams find themselves stumped by the dancers. Jeremy and Sandy are the first to head out to the right place, based mainly on Jeremy's drawing of the building from the costume medallion. And then their driver also calls the other two teams' cabbies to tell them where to go. Andy and Tommy return to take a second crack at it, while the other three teams race to the Pit Stop: Jeremy and Sandy win their first leg ever, followed by Ernie and Cindy, and Amani and Marcus. They're all really happy to be in the final three together. And Andy and Tommy's sixth win was their last, as they get Philiminated. That's got to hurt.