An "Insider" Look at Survivor: Guatemala, Episode 13: Curses!

I first said it in Episode 4’s Insider column – “we’re going to praise Rafe as a strategic stud by the time this show is over.” No one paid that little quote any attention at the time, did they? But now it’s becoming obvious who the REAL brains behind the alliance is, and you can all see who predicted it first. I’ve been predicting him as the winner for about six weeks now, and I won’t be a bit surprised if he beats Lydia with a shutout.

Cindy’s Final Words: Apparently living in the jungle, you’d think only the strong would survive, but that’s not true because she’s one of the strongest people up there tonight. For someone who has watched almost all the seasons, you’d think she’d know by now that strength and survival have very little to do with it. Besides, she obviously has no clue WHY she was voted out, as we’ll see later.

She has no regrets. Playing the game has been the biggest dream of her life, and everything that happened made the dream bigger than anything in her wildest dreams. She created friendships, amazing experience, never forget it, priceless memories worth more than a million, blah blah blah.

She doesn’t regret taking the car. She thinks if she had let the others have the car and go on the reward (which answers a major question of mine) she’d still be voted out because it’s all about Cindy being a strong competitor, which is silly because Rafe is winning all the time. Funny how it went from us forgetting Cindy was even in the game to her being a strong competitor. I think it’s more Rafe being a master manipulator and Cindy figuring that out. She’s always going to do her best and try her hardest, and if that got voted her out, so be it.

She’ll miss the sounds of the jungle, the birds, the frogs, the howler monkeys at 3 AM. Freak. You want noise at night, move into my apartment. Give me quiet.

She realized as she left camp that she was a major target, and thought she was leaving a home she can never get back to. Okay.

She learned she didn’t have to be someone she’s not to be successful, maybe a little more subdued in the attitude, but she pushed herself and it got her really far. She learned she can socialize with people she doesn’t know and be accepted with people she would have never expected to be friends with.

She hopes all the tribe’s expectations are realized, and that they have an appreciation for the jungle. When they got home, she hopes they wake up in the middle of the night and miss hearing the frogs and the howler monkeys. FREAK!

Cindy, the Day After: She feels, like, way better than she thought she would. She thought she might be bummed out, but she feels really good. She can’t think of anything negative about the experience. It’s hard to put into words. She gave it 110%, she didn’t regret it, she got a full experience, you can’t take it with you, win one for the Gipper, there’s no I in team. I don’t think she used ALL those clichés, but I think I blacked out there for a second.

She got to have all the experiences (which she explains, one by one, painstakingly) you can in this game, so there’s nothing she can possibly complain about, except not winning. That’s a pretty big one. Two and a half minutes in and she hasn’t said a thing.

This was the toughest Survivor ever, because of the environment. It was hot. Again, I’m still shocked that it was hot in Guatemala. You don’t sleep well because of the wonderful natural mosquitoes. Are you going to miss the mosquitoes, nature-girl? Your nutrition is down. It all creates a difficult situation to exist in. That’s why they call it Survivor, baby. Nothing was given to them. Just to get water, they had to go down a steep hill, and boil it, and it still had bugs and dirt in it. Everything seemed to be double the effort of past Survivors, since she’s been on all of them.

It’s all real out there. You miss one meal at home and you get cranky. Imagine in thirty days, you get one good meal. The mosquitoes are real, the heat is real, they’ve come close to exhaustion. I’ve come close to a coma watching this. They didn’t even have a water faucet! Did she not know what she signed up for?

The only negative she can find (since she can’t think of one) is when Danni, Judd, and Stephenie went on a reward with Gary. When they got back, Judd told her that Gary said that neither Cindy nor Lydia deserved to be in the game, that they were just sliding by. It hit a serious nerve. She thinks if you make it through the first challenge, the jungle trek, you earned the right to be there. She found it to be very unnecessary, and was annoyed that he misjudged her so badly. He’s telling her she doesn’t deserve to live the biggest dream she ever had? Well, for one, I would guess he was pushing Steph’s buttons. Secondly, not everyone deserves to live out their dreams. Who said that was a right? Get over it and quit being so thin-skinned. The fact that you got so irritated at it is a character flaw – if you think you’re deserving, who cares what Gary thinks? Sheesh!

She doesn’t believe in the curse of the car, as she explains for a good minute and a half. She thinks the plan was laid out before she won, so it was better than surrendering the car and going home anyway. She thinks the curse is more of a blessing, since she got more out of it by winning the car. Ooooookay.

Lydia’s Torch Testimonial:Lydia uses her torch staff as a journal by inscribing the happenings of the tribe on it. She writes down who has been voted off, who is on the jury, as well as the names of her family. It’s pretty much like a diary. Whee. It does make the “mark it on your torch” line later in the episode make sense, though.