Alternatively, Coach says, “A lot of us used our fingernails.”
On the show, you never see people putting on SPF or blasting themselves with insect repellent, but in a tropical environment that often has extreme weather, skipping either seems straight-up dangerous. (The show currently films in Fiji, but in previous years, including during the seasons featuring Coach, it took place in different locations.)
These products are, in fact, provided by production and kept close at hand at camp. “Sunscreen and bug spray are always available inside our medical box, which is situated far enough away from our shelter that you can never see us there,” Chong says, because the show doesn’t break the fourth wall in that way.
“The cameras don’t go there—it’s like your personal space,” Coach explains. That was a good thing for Chong, who says that she was so disoriented from not sleeping that she once bug-sprayed herself directly in the face.
Coach says that, during his tenure, contestants used a hybridized product for both critter and sun protection. “On all three [of my] seasons, they gave us ‘bug and sun’—it’s like a combination. It was, ‘Jack of all trades, master of none.’” He explains that the product protected him at least a little from sunburn, but bugs still feasted on him and others on the show. “Every season, you see people with massive bites on their legs,” he says. “When I slept in Tocantins, I could cover up most of my body, except for my hands—I would put ’em in my pants pocket, and there were two inches where [my skin] wasn’t covered. There’d literally be a hundred bites when I woke up—and that was slathering on the bug and sun.”
If you’re living among wild animals and God knows what kind of plant life, it would make sense to be on high alert. In terms of anything hazardous getting into the drinking water, Chong says there are protections in place: “Production provides potable water inside the well—the container was always filled and had a lid so that nasty creepy crawlies couldn’t get in,” she says.