Love in the Wild – Ep. 7: The Dirty Half-Dozen

Bare Down: The final 3 couples battle to win that trip around the world...and look good doing it.

This week the three remaining couples met Darren not in the jungle but at the beach in their skivvies.  He then told them to swim for it by which he meant a boat anchored maybe 50 meters offshore.  No problem, right?  No, none – except that Miles from Minnesota, land of 10,000 lakes, didn’t know how to swim.  Fearing that he might drown, he was outfitted with a life jacket and training wheels.  Having retrieved a map from underwater, all three couples started paddling like mad (on paddle boards) in a race to find five coin-filled bags and deliver them to an oddly named gentleman at a place called Coco’s Bar in town (Ed. Note: In Cahuita, for those curious).  While Mike was smacking Samantha in the head with a paddle, Skip, stoked by the sight of Teresa’s rear end staring him straight in the face, rowed his team into an early lead.  Meanwhile, Heather was doing her best to keep Miles from ending up face down in the kiddie pool.  Having been first to retrieve a fourth bag at the pier, Skip and Teresa were feeling pretty good about themselves at this point in the adventure. The only thing between them and the win was recovering the fifth bag and delivering it to that dude at Coco’s.  But, then the unthinkable happened. Teresa lost the fourth bag somewhere between the pier and forever.  And just like that their lead completely evaporated.  Yes, they backtracked, crossed paths with a mapache, went back into the water at the pier, but it was all for naught.  They were toast.  It was a two-team race after that.

Love in the Wild – Ep. 6: Bad luck turns into good luck, which turns back into bad luck

Last night episode began with a ‘big ass’ armadillo sighting.  Among some indigenous peoples, this apparently is a sign of good things to come.  If only Steele was conversant with aboriginal folklore, he would’ve known when he saw that ‘big ass’ armadillo – that his luck was about to change.

THE ADVENTURE

Have you ever had to find a carved stone mask hidden in a fichus tree?  Well, neither have I.  But, that’s exactly what the remaining five couples had to do last night.  Then, they had to find 4 more hidden variously on a rock pile, a guava grove, on top of a boulder, and behind a waterfall.  I won’t bore you with a tedious blow-by-blow description of the adventure.  Suffice it to say, Steele and Erica miraculously came in second, Skip instructed Teresa to find a horse with a “nice ass,” and, upon sliding into a mud pit, Erica emerged to say she detected the smell of horse**** in the air.  Along with another night at The Oasis, winning couple Samantha and Mike also won immunity and two tickets on a zip line.

Love in the Wild – Ep. 3: Snakebitten

…So, let’s see now, with Vanessa having been given the boot last week and Peter having been redirected to the caves at Lascaux, eight couples entered last night’s episode…

THE ADVENTURE

Steele rowing Kym to her doom.

Darren informed the sixteen competitors that they would have to race down a path leading to the shore of Lake Arenal, where, having first located a map, they would then jump into one of eight waiting canoes.  Their destination?  The ominously-named Snake Island (Ed. Note: For the record, not a real place in Costa Rica).  Derek and Jess pushed off first, while at the other end of a very short spectrum, Ben and Brandee couldn’t even find the gol’dern map.  Hitherto happy loving couple Samantha and Mike ran – er, paddled into (for the first time in three episodes) choppy seas, when Mike, being of the XX chromosome variety, insisted on rowing to the right when everybody else was rowing – correctly, I might add – to the left.  It was like watching a guy refuse to ask for directions – for fear that it would impugn his masculinity – while driving the family Winnebago off a cliff.  Samantha managed in the end to get all their oars in a row but not without losing a little faith in his stewardship of both the canoe and their budding romance.  Mike, however, wasn’t the only man in hot water in the lake.  Adam, who’d spirited Heather away from Miles in last week’s Couples’ Choice Ceremony, just couldn’t get a handle on the subtleties of rowing, thus sacrificing precious brownie points with the aforementioned Heather.

Love in the Wild – Ep. 2: Peter’d Out, Karma’s A *****

Jessica and a frightened Derek on Costa Rica's Hanging Bridges

And, then there were nine – nine couples, that is, what with Dawn and Jared having been eliminated last week.  This week, the newly-minted – and not-so newly minted – couples were informed by affable Scotsman Darren McMullen that they’d have to circumnavigate a slew of bridges slung perilously across gorges, chasms and voids – and even a bat cave for good measure – in pursuit of six so called tethers.  Said tethers were not only charged with “symbolic” significance, but also tested the couples’ ability to work in tandem so as to avoid certain death in that they literally connected boy to girl like an umbilical.  Like last week, the winning couple would get a night’s luxe accommodation at some place called The Oasis and, as an added bonus, the next day, a scenic helicopter ride and romantically situated lunch for two with an outstanding view of the majestic and still quite lively Volcan Arenal.

Love in the Wild – Ep. 1: The Adventure Begins…

On last night’s premier episode of the new NBC reality series, Love In The Wild, we got to meet the twenty contestants for the first time as they stood nervously in a leafy grove in the middle of the jungle in Arenal.  In brief video segments, we learned that basically they had all embarked on this once-in-a-lifetime adventure to find true love, having apparently run out of legitimate opportunities in the concrete jungle back home. At the young ladies’ choosing, they then all paired off and set out on their first, so-called adventure together – essentially an obstacle course – during which they raced to bring samples of air, earth and water back to the show’s genial host, young Scotsman Darren McMullen, waiting sweatily at the finish line.