What it’s like to tour the world on ‘The Amazing Race’
Alba Cardona loved “The Amazing Race.” The CBS globe-trotting reality competition gave the native Guatemalan a sense of adventure without having to leave her Waltham home. And soon, daughter Mary Cardona-Foster, and husband Chris Foster were watching with her.
In 2006, Cardona was diagnosed with cancer. She died months later.
So it was emotional when Cardona-Foster, now 27, and her dad, Chris Foster, 60, stood on a beach in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico: one of 13 teams on the starting line of season 36 of “The Amazing Race.”
“My dad has been raising me as a single dad since I was 10 years old,” Cardona-Foster, a GBH marketing manager, told host Phil Keoghan on the premiere. “He’s my teammate for life, so I wouldn’t want to do this with anybody else.”
The Waltham dad and daughter were eliminated on
the second episode, which aired March 20. (The last team to finish on each episode is eliminated.)
They may not have trotted the globe, but, as Chris Foster told us: “We wouldn’t change it for the world.
Foster met his wife while working at Pizzeria Uno in Newton.
“She was a cook; I was a waiter. It was love at first sight,” said Foster. Then “along came a little Mary.”
Since Cardona’s death, dad and daughter — who boast matching elephant tattoos to honor Cardona’s love of elephants — became each other’s world.
While they’d been fans of the show since Mary was little, they’d never considered auditioning until the summer of 2022.
“I thought: ‘Why not?’” said
Cardona-Foster. “The day we submitted our audition tape would’ve been my parents’ 15th wedding anniversary. I feel like my mom was shining down: ‘This is your moment.’”
That October, they got a call to fly to Hollywood. “We were crazy thrilled,” said Foster. From there, “we took off in the private jet with Phil” and other teams.
They had no idea where they were going.
“They don’t tell you anything,” he said. “We didn’t know if we were going to Antarctica. They don’t tell you what to pack, either.”
“I remember landing and seeing the Mexico flag waving, getting chills,” said CardonaFoster, adding that aside from trips to Guatemala to see her mom’s family, she hadn’t traveled much outside of the United States.
“You get off the plane, 13 teams of people all dressed alike, and suddenly everybody in the airport starts snapping pictures and screaming: ‘Oh my God, it’s ‘The Amazing Race!’ We felt like celebrities,” Foster said.
The next day they hit the beach. The race was on. Challenges included jumping through lassos at a rodeo, balloon collecting, and face-painting. (Mary painted her father’s.)
And, of course, there’s the actual race to the pit stop. Foster recalled, “Mary’s driving, zipping around Mexico. At one point she accidentally cut off [another] team. She put her hand up: ‘I’m sorry! This is how we do it in Boston!’”
Their first trip to Mexico didn’t leave much time for sightseeing — at least for Foster. “I’m 60 years old,” he said. “I was just concentrating on getting to the next stop.”
After eight miles on foot during a hot and humid stretch, Foster says, “We hit the bridge, and I had a total meltdown. I was completely dehydrated.”
“Mary was very caring, mixed together some electrolytes. At this point our main goal was to make it without being medevaced. Thanks to Mary, we made it on our own two legs.”
They watched the premiere with friends and family at Waltham’s Bistro 781.
How did it feel when their journey came to an end?
“It was sad, but I was thrilled to have this experience with my daughter,” Foster said. Since we filmed, “a day doesn’t go by that we don’t talk about it or laugh about it. We have a tight bond already, but this shored things up.”
“We never quit,” said Cardona-Foster. “I think that’s how we handle a lot of things in life.”