Contest #505 – Geographic Center of South America, Cuiabá, Brazil

Marshal Cândido Rondon is considered one of the great national heroes of Brazil. As an engineer, he helped build a telegraph line across the rainforest. He built great roads, including the one from Rio to Cuiabá. He was a great friend to and advocate for indigenous tribes. He led an exploration fo the River of Doubt with Theodore Roosevelt. H was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian efforts during conflicts between Peru and Colombia. When he died in 1958, Brazil named a state Rondônia.

One of his exploits was to calculate the geographic center of South America, which he placed in the town of Cuiabá. A plaque was placed there in 1909, and an obelisk was built in 1975.

Those who moved to the center before the hint included:

  • Glenmorren
  • Garfield
  • Lighthouse
  • Eloy Cano

And after the hint:

  • hhgygy
  • Phil Ower

Contest #504: National Amusement Park Amusement park in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

The National Amusement Park in UlaanBaatar was our fun destination this contest. It’s aimed at the younger crowd, but open year round.

Guests and their children can visit the family entertainment center to bowl, play billiards, video games, darts, karaoke and others. It offers over 20 various amusement rides such as tilt a whirl, space ship, crescent swing, crazy mouse, boat, super pirate ship, air cycle, ferris wheel and others.

The Artificial Lake Castle was built in 1969, when the National Amusement Park was established in the centre of the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar.

It is surrounded by an artificial lake and fortress walls in an eastern-Asian style. Inside the walls is a three-storey building. There are three watch towers. Since its establishment, an Ethnographic Museum operated in it until the mid-2000s. The castle has been rebuilt from 2010 assuming an appearance of a Western castle. The mock castle is part of an amusement complex together with the lake, and dock house.

2 points for searching for and finding a roller coaster in a desert:

  • Eloy Cano
  • Lighthouse
  • Garfield
  • Glenmorren
  • hhgygy
  • Phil Ower

1 point for after the hint

  • mehmet durmus
  • Luís Filipe Miguel

Contest #503: Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, USA

About 30,000 years ago, Lake Bonneville formed in what is now western Utah. This lake was massive — way larger than The Great Salt Lake, about 83,000 km2

About 15,000 years ago, a natural dam, at Red Rock Pass in eastern Idaho, which had helped create the lake, collapsed, creating The Bonneville Flood, considered the 2nd largest flood in recorded geologic history.

After the water had mostly run off, it left behind, among other things, this perfectly flat salt pan. The surface is kept flat because of a constant yearly cycle of winter flooding and spring/summer drying.

Because of this nearly flawlessly flat surface, the Salt Flats make a great surface for setting speed records. The first land speed record was set there in 1914, and many others have followed.

This location is highway rest stop on I-80 about 10 miles west of Wendover, Utah. Here, the state of Utah has set up an information station for those who want to walk out onto the flats

Those who raced out to the site before the hint were:

  • hhgygy
  • Lighthouse
  • Phil Ower
  • mehmet durmus
  • Glenmorren
  • Robin
  • Ashwini Agrawal
  • Eloy Cano
  • Garfield
  • Jeather
  • Rob de Wolff
  • Chris Nason
  • David Kozina

And after the hint:

  • Gillian B
  • donaaronio