MANILA, Philippines -- "Team Leader Leo, cash holder, decides anew not to buy water even after requests from teammates. Just one more hour & we can eat, drink free (Editor's note: Actual Twitter update has no period due to the 140-character limit)."

This is the latest in the almost blow-by-blow account at twitter.com/talesofthenomad of the Acer Media Challenge 2008 now ongoing in Cagayan de Oro, sent from the field by one of the race participants, INQUIRER.net executive editor Leo Magno, using his BlackBerry.

The SMS updates, which have a 140-character limit, are automatically posted on a website through the social networking tool Twitter, keeping readers updated as his team completes different challenges in this "Amazing Race"-like contest for different publications.

In fact, if the organizers do not periodically require participants to turn over their mobile phones as part of the race rules, readers could expect even more real-time updates.

Magno is the leader of Team Aspire Blue, which includes INQUIRER.net's Erwin Oliva and Izah Morales, and Media G8way's Sean de Jesus and Billy Allardo. The race has 31 race participants representing 12 media organizations.

Five teams are competing, with each having to complete a series of eight challenges, the last one being the white water rafting race, where participants will go through 18 kilometers of rapids.

Participants were only told about the eighth and final challenge Friday night when they arrived in Cagayan de Oro, and were kept in the dark about the first seven challenges until the race day itself.

Go to twitter.com/talesofthenomad or check out the Twitter badge at INQUIRER.net's Tales of the Nomad travel blog to keep track of the Cagayan de Oro adventure race.