This is not the place to post spoilers on TAR Asia or any other international TAR edition. It is the place to report any spoilers for season 13, as they begin to roll out. This thread probably won't be active for some time, but when it does happen, this is the way to keep different spoilers for different seasons separate.

Thanks to an amazing find from kogs at RFF, we may have a possible start date of April 20-21.

We are reading this as pre-show cast interviews beginning about April 7, and the race beginning April 20 -ish.

Very nice find! Thanks auntieB!

SERIOUSLY! EEEEEEEEEEEEEE! I am so happy!!

I'm taking this means a September start to TAR13 with a December finale?

Could be earlier.

I'm basing my guess on about a 2 1/2 month gap between the end of filming and the airing of the show. TAR9 finished filming 12/3/05 and aired 2/28/06; TAR10 finished filming 6/24/06 and aired 9/17/06; All-Stars finished 12/17/06 and aired 2/28/07. So assuming the filming will start 4/20/08 and finish about 5/20/08 or so, it should be ready to air by mid-August at the latest. However, at that point, I think they would wait for September to start.

I am having SERIOUS TAR withdrawal symptoms (including nightmares of milking angry camels, arguing with taxi drivers, and ---- well, the one good part is frequent visions of Phil).

Season 13 can't start soon enough. I'd settle for some reruns of seasons I still haven't seen, for that matter!

I agree, I only missed seasons two and three (saw the final episode of season three) and would love to see them aired on TV. And not on Fox Reality because my cable company does not carry that channel!

Seeing any postings in Season 13 Spoilers has made my day. Thank you! I keep waiting for news and pictures of racers spotted in airports, etc. Start racing already!

There are, I guess, no spoilers of any sort about where this edition of the Race will start? Given that Phil will be telling teams to Travel Safe in just a few hours from now.. if he hasn't already done it yesterday morning.

Well, they didn't leave out of LAX.

I have a sunburn to prove it.

And though Boston was bandied about last season, I'm just sayin' that it's a nigh impossibility for this season. Half the city was closed off on Sunday for the Marathon on Monday.

Well...they didn't leave out of LAX on Sunday...

But Tuesday? Maybe so!!

Damn, damn, double damn.

Grrrrr

What else can I say?

Yippee!

Filming confirmed.

Sighting verified.

Looks like they are really off and racing!

Now....to figure out just where...

AuntieB, thank you very much! Best news I've seen out of anything in my life, all week! As in the material for the upcoming season, which I hope gets to the TV as soon as possible!

I've been inspired to take a peek at this nice clean spoiler thread and was thrilled to see that TAR13's started.

I went huntin' on Flickr and came across this photo of a racer (there's a little number tag on his backpack) taken at O'Hare on April 22 at 17:08 PDT, 20:08 EST, the same day as the LAX sighting. So if the race did indeed start in California and one of the flight's connections is in Chicago, I would think that Asia and the South Pacific are almost certainly no-go's for the first leg.

ETA And Central/South America, too.

Thanks to kogs at RFF, the first stop may be Buenos Aires....

Do they normally have number tags on their backpacks? I don't remember any, but I never really looked, either.

Yes, they do.

The orange color is new though, I believe.

If they were seen at LAX heading in the direction of the United terminal and then show up in Chicago, they could go anywhere. Chicago is major a United hub (HQ) and jump off point for many places (including South America - although they don't have a lot of flights heading that direction anymore). Whilst it doesn't always seem logical, it could make sense to go there to get a non-stop rather than a flight that makes a couple of stops.

Curiosity satiated, I now need to stay out of this topic...

Wonder why there is no photo of that guy's partner/teammate. The partner couldn't have been very far away -- since there strict rules about not straying, etc.

Thanks, auntieB. I had no idea. I'm going to have to watch for that. I guess it's a way to identify which bag belongs with which team at a glance.

The LAX or Chicago sightings could be decoys. TPTB know that there are eagle eyed fans out there looking for evidence of the race. It wouldn't cost that much to set up a couple of decoy starts. Why fly to Chicago from LA, why not just start in Chicago?

Highly unlikely they'll come back to my little corner of the world (Brisbane Australia - TAR4) but I'll spend the next month on the look out for people with backpacks running around being pursued by people with cameras.

Anyhoo - TAR13 is off and running!

I found out from a ticket agent at LAX that the first leg of the race goes to Sao Paulo, Brazil. Full story here.

Seems kind of odd that they would reuse Sao Paulo when they just had that as the first leg in season 9. Perhaps its another layover en route to the first destination?

TAR does not use decoys at the start, so this is it!!

They may have originally been planning a Miami start, but plans changed....

11 teams, and teams flying to Sao Paulo...and of course they can always go on from there.

Great job Paris!

Thanks AuntieB. LAX is definitely the starting airport. I spoke with at least four ticket agents who saw the filming. And they saw red and yellow flags attached to the line-up poles too.

They can use a different nearby city to be the actual starting point such as Pasadena or San Marino. So this makes five TAR starts in the LA area. Lazy, I know but I don't mind because it makes it easy to follow up on clues.

emeraldfire stated .

Well, my analyses on the subject of possible air routes from Sao Paulo have lead to some surprising results. Sure, the odds-on favorites for exit from South America are the European citites of Madrid, Lisbon, London, Paris, or Frankfurt. However, there is a daily LAN flight from Santiago Chile nonstop to Auckland and a 3 times per week Aerolineas Argentinias flight from Buenos Aires nonstop to Auckland. Both planes go on to Sydney, but there are lots of flights from Auckland to Brisbane. I would say look out for those backpacks in Brisbane for at least the next 2 weeks(long enough for South America to be completed). It is also possible that the exit will be to Africa, but I think that is improbable because of overuse in the past.

If they do come to Australia again, most likely it will be to a city they haven't been to before - the only ones left are Melbourne (Victoria), Canberra (the national capital) and Hobart (Tasmania).

But I can still dream that they will come back to Brisbane...

Here's hoping they do come to Australia as that always seems to encourage the local station to air the show quicker. My bet would be a visit through Melbourne, although if they had thought of asking me I could give them a wonderfully already planned leg through western NSW, with me as the mat greeter of course.

I told myself I wouldn't spoil myself for this race but it seems I just can't help it.

Bill1978 that is simply too tragic for words. I thought I was the only one with fantasy TAR route and task plans.

Neither of you are. I've been bored enough to plan a full race route - clues, tasks, the whole Magilla.

Apskip, I believe that LAN flight between Santiago and Auckland is also the only regular flight which stops on Easter Island. So, please producers, DO IT. But the longest we've stayed in South America so far is only eight days or something.

I'm on spoiler lookout down here in Melbourne, which would have a 75-80% chance of being used as a stopover point for at least one team if Hobart was on the route, and a 100% chance if the race comes here. I'll let y'all know if I see anything.

raceguy120390 states

Well, you get partial credit, raceuy120390. A nonstop flight between Santiago and Auckland by defnition does not stop anywhere but its final destination of Auckland. However, LAN-Chile does have some service from Santiago to Easter Island. There is LA841 which leaves at 0810 Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays arriving at 1150, a 5 hour 40 minute flight with 2 time zones to cross. There is also on Sundays and Wednesdays LAN833 departing Santiago 1645 arriving Mataveri Airport at 2025 (these 2 weekly flights only are stopovers on the way to Tahiti).

So the problem is this: If you go to Easter Island, you are not going on directly to New Zealand or Australia. You have to do so through Tahiti(not the worst thing that could ever happen), but that island also has limited flights. The other option is to return to Santiago, which doesn't make much sense although it would be possible in that situation.

I can't back up this info with more than this post - in portuguese - but it appears they traveled to Salvador, Brazil's third largest city, on April 24 and 25. One of the tasks was to rappel down the Elevador Lacerda, a city landmark (the white structure). The source is a local newspaper.

Hope it helps.

Just got off the phone with a friend of mine. Apparently - though I can't prove one way or the other because they don't have a camera and I'm stuck at uni - there's a flag on top of an office building on Elizabeth Street right now. The only likely task, if any, would be one of those 'look out the window and find a flag' deals. I'm thinking there's also a cluebox set up right now on the Rialto Towers Observation Deck, which would make sense because there's a new tower with a higher observation deck, and this gets fewer spoilerhunters like myself.

Firstly, crappy task, even if it's one I just speculated about, and secondly, evil making them visit Melbourne in the middle of a cold snap - currently it's around 1:20pm local time, and temperature is 10.2 degrees Celsius. [Americans, that's just a tiny fraction over 50 degrees Fahrenheit by my count - and yes, that is a cold snap by local standards.] Still, both Sydney and Cairns (and Darwin too?) were rainy when TAR came, so I suppose I shouldn't complain.

More info please...

What kind of flag? Traditional TAR flag?

Could someone pretty please go take pics??

Which office building?

I don't know about the building, his phone cut out at precisely the wrong moment. I've been trying to get a hold of him since I posted for more, but... yeah.

But he did tell me it was a 'gold and red flag like that show you obsess about'.

ETA: He's the sort of person who would play a trick on me like this, so there's about a 50% chance he's sitting at home laughing his frozen arse off at me right now.

Could be a decoy? Could be something totally un-TAR related? Could be the real thing? Could be your friend teasing you that he can see a TAR flag and you can't get there to see it for yourself? Could be your friend just pulling your leg? Time will tell. Let's hope it was the real thing, though I feel for you if it was and you were "this close" and didn't get to see anything. **sigh**

My son went through LAX on 15 April on his way home from a holiday in Seattle - the week before the sightings. Would he have noticed anything if he had been a week later? Probably not.

I'm from Melbourne too, and as much as I would love that to be true, I'm sure the MX paper would have mentioned something if TAR was filming?

Anyway, they were in Cambodia yesterday according to survivorsucks.com

http://survivorsucks.yuku.com/topic/28916/...ead.html?page=7

Cambodia? Awesome!

Credit for the Cambodia find actually really goes to puddin at RFF.

But Cambodia! Angkor Wat!

And this means that teams are travelling westerly and that Australia remains a geographic possibility, as would NZ and South Africa.

A friend of mine was in Siem Reap, Cambodia a couple of days ago and saw:

"an African American couple down by the dock, and she was holding their backpacks and he was stacking baskets and then they jumped in the back of a waiting truck and off they went. They kept filming them while in the back of the truck, and then they got out and were heading up to a wat I think"

Thanks for sharing that!

Is it possible to ask for more info from your friend? Exactly which day? What time? Any other teams before or after? And by any chance are there pictures??

It was on May 3rd. She did not see any other teams. I will see if I can find out about the time and pictures.

Right now, someone at WRP is probably reading here and RFF and going "How the @#$# did they find them? We sent them to the corners of the earth!"

I'm a little worried from the casting spoilers. Another hippie couple (though this may be Original Recipe hippies, as also the required old couple), another pink-wearing blondes... I'm getting a bad smell of mactors from the racer descriptions.

RFF has got Melbourne as a possible location. I assume thats just to fill in a gap in the dates and not because anybody has any info?

So I convinced RaceExBoyfriendRyan to take me to the building he says the flag was on. He took me to some random coffee shop the next street over from Elizabeth Street. Which as you'll notice from above, is not the office tower he said it was. Apparently this was all some ruse to try and get back together with me. (And I'm not going to get back together with that lying asshole. He should know better than to fuck with my TAR obsession.)

Feel free to return to your usual spoilery discussion while I go hunt him down.

RFF gave up on Melbourne earlier.

But RFF does have Brazil, Cambodia, Delhi, and now possibly Dubai! As well as pictures and descriptions of many of the teams.