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Seeking Shelter with Carolina Eastwood of Survivor: Tocantins
by Troy Rogers
 Only weeks after 57-year old Bow Crowley gave his younger tribe mates a lesson in how to win Survivor: Gabon the smart way, CBS was back to reality business with 16 new survivors in Brazil for Survivor: Tocantins. Season 18 began with a twist that saw the already preassigned tribes vote out the weakest, one each, before the game even began. Despite knowing that the elder Crowley, one of the strongest players in the show's history, took home the million dollar prize from Gabon, the Jalapao tribe still picked the oldest person, 53-year old Louisville bus driver, Sandy Burgin, to leave the game early. But little did the Jalapao tribe members know, including West Hollywood bartender Carolina Eastwood, that Sandy wasn't going home. Instead she was airlifted to the tribe's camp, which was a four-hour walk on foot that the Jalapaos had to make.
When the tribe mates arrived at their camp to meet Sandy, who hadn't made their shelter in favor of hidden immunity, Carolina took matters into her own hands and tried to rally her fellow Jalapaos to build a shelter and get their camp up and running. But with everyone tired from the walk, the 120 degree heat the next day, no one was in the mood for working at breakneck speed.
When it came time for Tribal Council in the open landscape of Tocantins, Carolina Eastwood became the first person to leave Brazil after being blindsided by her tribe mates when they decided to keep the older Sandy.
The next morning, we tracked down Carolina to find out her original strategy, her reaction when she learned the early twist, who she wanted to see leave instead of her, and how she felt about Sandy despite voting her out at the beginning.
THE DEADBOLT: You mentioned that you gained weight and went to a nutritionist before the game started. What was your original strategy going into it, in terms of game play?
 CAROLINA EASTWOOD: I knew that I needed to play a social game and it’s too funny - I mean, Survivor became my life before up until we started filming and I knew going in I had to play a social game. But the thing about Survivor is you can’t really have a strategy until you meet your cast mates because you have one way, like, "Okay, this is how I’m going to play the game."
But then you meet them and who you think is the strongest is the weakest. You know, like you really have to meet your cast mates. So mine was a work-in-progress and obviously it didn’t work out for me, because I got the boot, man. But yeah, my goal was to get in the game, play it socially, figure out who was the weakest and the strongest and try to align myself with the strongest and go from there. I also did not want to be that girl that just rode coattails. I was going to work just as hard as the boys were and that was my thought going in - "If the boys can do it, I can do it."
THE DEADBOLT: How surprised were you that it wasn’t Sandy to get voted out first?
CAROLINA: It’s funny. A part of me - What you guys don’t see is - I had like a weird feeling that something weird was going on. I could just tell something wasn’t right. So I went up to J.T. and Stephen and I called them out - "Are you voting me out? I feel like I’m being voted out tonight." Stephen and J.T., who I thought I could trust, were like, "Why would we vote you out? You’re a strong player. No," and convinced me that I wasn’t being voted out. I wasn’t going to be the first one voted out.
But a part of me was worried because I was very vocal about getting a shelter done, and that’s what kind of threw me for a loop last night. What you don’t see is that J.T. wanted the shelter up just as much. I mean, Taj wanted it up just as much. And in the game you need a shelter to sleep and it was 120 degrees outside and we needed to be under shade and we didn’t have shade. So my thought process was like, shelter, shelter, shelter so we can rest and save our energy for challenges, and obviously my aggressiveness got me into trouble.
So when I had that feeling, I called them out on it and they convinced me that it wasn’t. So seeing that they kept Sandy and not me, I have a lot of respect for Sandy. I think she’s a great lady. But yeah, I was pissed because she did nothing. She didn’t help with the shelter, she did nothing, and it was so hard. I worked so hard to be there and to have it taken away from me was devastating.
THE DEADBOLT: What did you think when Jeff first revealed that two people wouldn’t be making the journey to camp?
 CAROLINA: I wasn’t scared. I was like, I knew that they weren’t going home. We had 16 castaways and I was like, "There’s no way that they’re getting rid of two people right now." So I thought that we were going to vote someone out and we were going to switch and Sandy was going to go to the other tribe. That’s what was going on in my head. And then, when I found out she was taking a helicopter ride there, I was kind of relieved because I was like, "Okay, we’re about to hike for four hours and I don’t know if this lady can manage a four hour hike." I was relieved that she got a ride to our camp. But I was really upset when I found out she did nothing.
THE DEADBOLT: Aside from Sandy, who else do you think should’ve left before you did?
CAROLINA: Spencer.
THE DEADBOLT: [laughs] That was quick. No hesitation there.
CAROLINA: I mean, I’m sorry. I like Spencer a lot, but when you go on Survivor you don’t complain about missing your iPod - "Hi, you’re on Survivor. I don’t know [if] you know, you’re not going to have an iPod." Why complain about it? He complained a lot. That kid complained so much and I was like, "Really, dude?" And the only thing I can say I complained about, and I’ll be completely upfront and honest about it, was that we needed a shelter and we needed things to get done around camp. But I didn’t complain about not having things. Hello, I’m on Survivor, duh! That’s what I joined up for.
THE DEADBOLT: How much harder was it to get things done with the heat as a factor? Was the heat the reason it seemed like you and Sydney were lagging behind during the challenge?
 CAROLINA: Yeah, the heat was awful. And, on top of that, my feet were cement. Never ever wear tennis shoes into the water and sand, because if you actually watch the challenge they do an overhead view of the challenge and you see J.T. run in and then I’m the first girl into the water. So I was like booking it into the water. But then, right when I hit the bottom, my shoes filled up with sand and water and I literally felt like I had two cement blocks tied to my feet, and I just couldn’t move.
Other people on the cast all felt that way. They were like, "We should’ve never worn our tennis shoes." But yeah, the heat, that day of the challenge it was 120 degrees. The heat was - I mean it was awful. It was so hot you couldn’t even breathe. When you would take a deep breath and there was nothing, and the humidity was awful. So yeah, I think the heat had a lot to do with us lagging behind. But what you guys don’t see is that we were five minutes ahead on the challenge. We were doing the puzzle for about five minutes. Timbira was still on the stairs and they caught up to us. So we had a five minute lead ahead of them and we still lost. That was devastating.
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