Day 9, and Sally knows she's on the outside. Her plan is to keep working hard to prove herself to the tribe. Elsewhere, Dan is thinking about after the merge and offers Ruth Marie the fifth spot in their alliance because he doesn't trust Sally. Nick and Terry agree with the move.

Over at Casaya another peaceful morning begins. Yeah right. Shane, Aras and Bruce return from collecting snails to find Courtney doing yoga, Bobby and Danielle sleeping, and the fire completely out. Aras calls everyone together to talk about work and Courtney gets offended.

The Reward Challenge is pulling six large puzzle pieces into a floating frame then solving the puzzle. The winner gets a bathroom shack with toilet paper, and an outdoor shower.

It's neck-and-neck the entire way with La Mina holding a slight lead as they start work on the puzzle. In a huge upset Casaya just flies through the mental part and wins! They choose Terry to be Exiled.

La Mina is absolutely lost without Terry. They can't decide what to do next and they can't get a fire going. Meanwhile at Casaya--you're not going to believe this-- they're fighting. Aras wants to use the new bathroom to keep wood dry. Bobby says before that happens he's going to use it to "take a dump" which really annoys Danielle. I'm starting to lose track of who hates whom on that tribe.

Terry looks through the Exile Island clues and determines that the "why" in Misty's clue refers to a Y-shaped tree. Sure enough, he finds the Idol buried in the ground! It's a shrunken head talisman. Now why would they show us that this early in the game?

On February 11, Jan wrote in and said: "After watching Thursday's show, and seeing Bruce open the cloth with the clues on it, the word 'WHY' was made obvious in parentheses, so I'm now figuring it might be in the 'Y' of a tree!" It would've been much cooler if I had included this last week, but you'll have to take my word for it that Jan is very smart.

Aras tells us that he and Shane call the shots and Cirie is working very hard. Shane asks Danielle why she has "an aversion to work." Aras backs him up. Danielle understandably isn't too happy about that and yells at Shane. Amazing.

Las Minas see fish jumping everywhere but can't catch any. They're starting to get hungrier and weaker.

For the Immunity Challenge the Survivors are linked in pairs. The goal is to carry buckets of water over a balance beam in order to fill a bigger bucket. One person from each tribe sits on a seat attached to a pulley system and the first team to collect enough water to pull their person to the top wins. Ruth Marie and Danielle are the sitters. I wonder whose implants are heavier?

Surprisingly, Shane and Courtney are partners. Even more surprising, they don't strangle each other with their rope. Sally and Austin are fast for La Mina but Dan and Terry are slow. The Destructive Duo is also very fast. Dan falls off the beam at one point and loses a lot of time. It starts to rain for dramatic effect. They come down to the final buckets. Shane pours his a lot faster than Austin, and Casaya wins again!

Terry tells us he's going to keep his Idol a secret. Probably a good idea. Sally tells the guys she has "a lot of game left," whatever that means. Austin tells Terry that Ruth Marie is weaker than Sally and points out it was only Dan that gave his word to Ruth, and Terry is convinced. Austin somehow equates this to turning water into wine and says he has "Jesus of Nazareth-like powers." Sorry, Austin, our Lord and Savior was able to catch fish.

Dan is not pleased with the new plan. He thinks trusting Sally is "a big mistake." Nick isn't happy about turning on Ruth Marie either.

At Tribal Council Jeff asks Sally if they asked Terry about the Idol. She says he didn't say anything either way. Jeff says Sally "dominated" in the Challenge. Austin says he poured the final bucket of water too slow and he'll "take the blame for that." Ruth Marie knows her size and age are weaknesses but says she's very loyal.

The women vote for each other and the tally goes: Ruth Marie, Sally, Ruth Marie, Sally (it's not unanimous), Ruth Marie… Ruth Marie! Dan kept his word but it wasn't enough.

Next time on…Survivor: La Mina has stomach troubles, Courtney invades Bruce's "Zen garden," he says he'd rather be on Exile Island than with her, and Casaya's camp is flooded.

It's very interesting that both tribes are defying standard Survivor logic. If someone attempts to be a leader they're almost always quickly eliminated, and if tribemates can't get along, they never win Challenges. Yet La Mina has embraced Terry as a leader to the point that they're worthless without him, and Casaya is on a big winning streak. Will this flood wash things back to normal?

Reminder: The new Amazing Race starts on Tuesday! They're back to teams of two, they're back to international travel, and I'm back too.

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