My partner Cat and I went on holiday to Fiji and, in particular, Mana Island Resort, the island where a good chunk of the television show Survivor is shot. Here’s what we found.
Previously on Survivor Holiday - Mana Island Resort: Dan and Cat found the remnants of a challenge that would have required far too much climbing! Also, an air-conditioned Jesus!
Day Three
Our early morning exploration of the remainder of the west side of the island (so called, according to local legend, because of its frequent impromptu productions of West Side Story) sees immediate success with the discovery of the remnants of some kind of challenge apparatus in which you must wedge yourself into an uncomfortable position and maintain your stance.
There were five such stations, which leads me to the following conclusion about Survivor 50: There will be at least one (1) final five challenge in Survivor 50. (Spoilers, obviously.)
Similarly, we also found the kind of challenge platforms on which those mad Survivor producers might demand you balance on one leg for an extended period of time, usually holding a ball or something in place.
See? (If you look closely the same island is in the background of all three of these shots. That’s the island for two of the tribe camps. More on that, later…)
Having won the challenge, I selected Cat to join me on a reward at what Google Maps assured us was the site of The Sanctuary (‘where good things happen’). If so, it had been rather overgrown since last used. Which, to be fair, would have been about nine months earlier.
On the plus side, I found a hidden immunity idol! Or, to be more precise, we planted a fake immunity idol that we had made back at camp while waiting for somebody to come around and fix our wifi. We cobbled it together from the necklace given to us on arrival, and random trinkets from the convenience store.
Do we really think that a contestant on the actual show might find our fake idol in this log and think that it’s real? Of course not. Production will clear out this area before they set up any future Sanctuary nonsense. And even if they don’t, and somebody finds our silly idol, it’ll never make air. Which, to our way of thinking, is perfect. We can just imagine somebody found it and got all excited, before being instantly disappointed when it was immediately stamped out of the game. Fun mischief! Fun, pointless mischief.
That was enough exploration for the day, because by the time we returned to camp, we had received letters from home! Or, more accurately, email notifications from home that Stephen Fishbach’s book ‘Escape!’ was now available for download onto our assorted devices.
As I posted online at the time: “Here we are, on the island where they film Survivor, reading a book by Survivor Stephen Fishbach, based on his Survivor experiences, while wearing Survivor buffs won in Survivor competitions run by the Previously on Australian Survivor podcast. Can YOU guess the holiday theme? #Survivor 🌴”
Oh, and for dinner? Difficult to resist the infamous Survivor pizza.
Tomorrow: The other side of the island!
