29--O19--Gabon--Earth's Last Eden

Rank: Original #23
Season # 29
Title:  Survivor: Gabon--Earth's Last Eden

Location: Wonga-Wonge Presidential Reserve, Estuaire, Gabon
Broadcast: Fall, 2008
New Players:  18
Returning Players: 0

Days: 39
Winner:  Bob Crowley
Final Tribal Council:  3 Players 7 Jury
Initial Tribes: Fang, Kota
1st Swap at 15

2nd Swap at 10
Merge: at 9 Nobag (Gabon spelled backwards)
Jury: at 10
Premise:  Tribes were chosen by the Eldest players (Gillian and Bob) without regard to gender and the person chosen chose next.  This resulted in Gillian's tribe being weaker than Bob's  Also included Exile Island giving the player an option of a Hidden Immunity Idol clue or comfort.

First reward was to race to the top of the hill for individual immunity at first tribal.  First complete tribe to make it up the hill, gets an extra bag of food.  

Marcus, and G.C. won the immunity idols.  Bob's tribe--Kota won the food. 

Back at camps, Ken and Michelle had a budding romance going as they shared termites for protein.  Randy cut his head open, and Ace was designing latrines, while Bob created benches and roofs. 

Michelle was designated as a "Negative Nancy" and was voted off first from Fang, followed by Gillian.   GC was voted "leader" at the first Tribal and he resigned prior to the next challenge.  

Meanwhile on Kota, Marcus and Charlie plotted a 4 person alliance with Jacquie and Corinne.  Later Corinne brought in Bob.  Paloma and Sugar were the first two targets.  

The exile twist of Comfort or Clue was interesting.  Dan was the first exiled, and chose the clue but was unable to follow the clue.  Sugar came 2nd and figured out the clue which led to another clue.  Finding that, she followed to a 3rd clue, and finally the idol.  As she was sent back several more times, she then took comfort and renamed Exile Island as the "Sugar Shack".

On the third immunity challenge, Ken and Bob were the two math whizzes who had to solve a number word problem.  After several tries, Ken successfully got the answer as Kota had to go to Tribal Council.   After considering taking out Ace, the group took out Paloma as planned. 

On day 10, the tribes were switched.  After ranking players from strongest to weakest based on tribe individual vote, One interesting note, the two ranked 7th, both made it to FTC with Bob.  New tribes were picked.  Marcus and Matty who were ranked #1 were the selectors, and had to choose somebody from the other tribe, alternating in a schoolyard pick.   

Dan, Randy and Susie switched to Kota.  Jacquie, Kelly and Ace joined Fang.  Both original tribes kept 4 of their original tribe.  Sugar meanwhile went to Exile avoiding the first vote and then joined Fang.  

Ken and Kelly had a budding romance, using her unhappiness with Kota to help Fang vote off the other two.  Fang lost the next three immunities taking out Jacquie, GC (who essentially quit) and then Kelly.   On Day 21, both tribes went to tribal with individual immunity.   Marcus won for Kota, and then assigned immunity to Sugar, and  Ace and Dan were eliminated. 

Sugar started upping her game at this point.  She was instrumental in getting her closest ally--Ace out, and refused to give him the HII.  

The Kota group of Randy, Corinne, Marcus and Charlie formed a final four alliance going into the vote to oust Dan.  This plan worked--not at all as the next four and first four jury members were Marcus, Charlie, Randy and Corinne. 

On Day 21 there was another swap for one immunity separating Marcus from the other 3.   After a feast that everyone thought was a merge feast, and sharing an idol clue, finding it and throwing it away, they opened a box and found out that they were swapping.  This kept a 3-2 advantage of the 2nd Kota tribe referred to as the Kota-6 on both tribes.   Susie flipped at tribal and eliminated Marcus. 

After one more reward challenge, the tribes merged at the immunity challenge. Bob had been sent to exile and could not find the idol, but created a fake one while there. 

The battle for the first merged tribal council broke down between  Corinne, Charlie, Randy, and Bob vs. Susie, Matty, Crystal and Ken with Sugar as the swing vote.  Corinne thinking she had Sugar won over by being by being nice to her one day after being mean for 23.   Sugar also felt betrayed by Ken by feeding her false information leading to her voting out Ace.  In the end, she voted for Charlie.   The 5 remained together to take Randy out, Ken switched on the next vote but the 4 took out Corinne, completing the sweep of that alliance.  

Bob won 3 immunities in a row, avoiding a vote out.  Susie won the final immunity, and Bob once again was the target.  However, Sugar felt compassion for Bob as a father figure after the loss of her father shortly before playing.  She forced a tie sending Matty and Bob to a fire challenge, with Bob winning and then winning the game in a 4-3 vote over Susie with Sugar getting no votes.  

Bob was a likeable winner, and his innovations were great to watch.  The lopsided result and lack of exciting characters keeps this from going higher.