The Buddy System

The Buddy System is the ninth episode of.

Story
In order to prevent any flipping to the Zapatera 5 Boston Rob comes up with "The Buddy System". The Buddy System means no one from his alliance can talk to Zapatera and only talk to Ometepe tribe mates. This works to perfection as Ometepe keep their numbers in voting out Mike Chisel on Day 22 and David Murphy on Day 24.

Immunity (Day 22)
Challenge: Meso Soup 

Each castaway will dig to retrieve a club and use it to smash a tile. The first six move onto the next round, where they must submerge their head in a water trough, take in a mouth full of water, and then crawl under the trough to spit the water into a bowl, which fills up a tube. The first three to fill up the tube move onto the final round, where they must solve a block puzzle. The first person to get the puzzle right wins immunity.

Winner: Grant Mattos

Immunity (Day 24)
Challenge: Gang Hang 

The castaways will hang from a bar for as long as they can. After twenty minutes, they will be allowed to use only their legs to hold them up. Once they drop from the bar, they are out of the challenge. Last person left hanging wins immunity.

Winner: Andrea Boehlke

Redemption Island
There was no duel, as there was only one inhabitant at the time. The next duel will be held on the next episode.

Voting Confessionals
"murlonio"

- Hopefully, this works.

Trivia

 * This episode marked the earliest appearance of a Second Chances challenge (a challenge that consists of parts of previous challenges of that season) under the guise of Meso Soup.
 * This episode marks the first time that multiple members of the eventual jury are not present at tribal council (both Matt Elrod and Mike Chiesl were not present during the tribal council of David Murphy's vote off)
 * On Day 22, Rob reached his 100th day of playing Survivor
 * The episode's namesake is a new strategy that Rob made up this episode.
 * This episode was the first time a castaway tried to make a vote worth more votes than it actually was. But it was counted as one vote.
 * David Murphy tried to make the vote worth 4 times the amount while trying to vote off Rob Mariano.