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Due to a strong showing last week, Carol and Brandy now recognize that the cowboys are a team to be taken seriously. Brandy notes, "They have tricks up their sleeves and their tricks have tricks." (Better alternate episode title #1). It's nice to see the boys debunking the dumb hick stereotype to some degree but I wager they wish people would continue to underestimate them on the race. While the compliments are doled out to the guys from the girls, Jet and Cord are put off by their incessant asking how they have gotten ahead and didn't get the "warm and fuzzy vibe from them." As Jet puts it, "A ‘Hey, how you doing?' would have been nice."

So the first bus with Jet and Cord, Joe and Heidi and Carol and Brandy leaves 20 minutes ahead of bus number two with the other six teams. In Argentina, even though the cowboys know where they are going, they pull over to give the impression they are lost, so the others won't just follow them.

The second bus arrives and the teams make a break for the saloon, except for South Carolina who immediately get turned around, and brothers Dan and Jordan, who succumb to Dan's stick shift ineptitude once again. Note to future Racers: Add this item to your checklist right after "Buy backpack" – LEARN TO DRIVE A MANUAL TRANSMISSION BEFORE STARTING THE RACE.

The first bus teams reach the saloon. Since Five Card Stud is a game of 100% chance, this could be damaging to any team. Unlike the challenges where the teams control how they perform, these luck-of-the-draw tasks would make me extremely uneasy as a contestant.

Joe and Heidi win the first hand played as well as Carol and Brandy. The cowboys lose two hands to the inanimate object before finally getting a winning hand. All three teams head to the Roadblock that requires them to use a rope to lasso a bale of hay and pull it to them to get the clue.

While the red flag is raised in the viewers' minds that having a challenge with lassos and a team that are professional cowboys is unfair, the producers boldly beat us to the punch. Brandy complains but in his interview, Cord points out, "Brandy didn't think it was fair because this Roadblock is too much like our way of life, but we didn't throw a fit because they know Spanish and we don't."

Here are my two cents. I agree with Cord. Every season there are multiple teams that have a language advantage over the others (e.g. hippies BJ and Tyler speaking fluent Japanese in a previous season), so does that mean the producers should rule out any destination in which teams have linguistic advantage? Of course not. Second, the show typically tries to highlight an aspect of the host country's culture in the challenges and ranching and cowboys seem to figure prominently into this area. Anyway, that's just my opinion.

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