As the lessons begin, Da immediately climbs a bent-over tree by walking up the trunk. That is awesome. The women look on, amazed, as he drops a bunch of coconuts to the ground. He hacks a coconut open, takes a chug from it, and shares it with the tribe. They express their gratitude, and he asks them to follow him a little more. Thoroughly convinced, they trail after Da into the trees. Da is completely the coolest thing ever, if only because he makes it so obvious that nature is not hostile in any inherent way; it's a matter of knowing what the hell you're doing so that you don't eat things that are meant to be decorative or try to sleep on a plant that uses itchiness as its natural defense mechanism.

Food exploration begins. Da pulls up a root from very close to the women's camp, and informs them that they can eat it. See? Interesting! In an interview, Leann chuckles over the fact that they simply had had no idea what to eat until they met with Da. Most remarkably, Da shows them where to find sugar cane. Yes, that's right, the women have been growing candy near their camp and had no idea. They are all thrilled. Da shows them something else to eat -- a...nut or something? -- and Twila makes a truly hilarious face trying to understand what he's saying. It's the perfect facial embodiment of "Say what?" The music of excitement turns to music of confusion, which you can identify because it has more things going "boing" and "zoop." Lisa opines in an interview that Da had an easier time understanding them than they had understanding him. She explains that, like people throughout history who weren't too bright, the women learned from Da by making him point at things. He shows them something about how to open a coconut by making reference to the "face" on the end of the coconut, which looks like it would be kind of cool to know, if we had time, which we don't, because there is complaining and stupidity to get back to eventually. Ami takes a turn opening a coconut. Julie describes the women as "in awe" of Da. She adds that Da cooked a great dinner, too. Overall, she says he was "a blessing." Ami essentially agrees that the women were so busy enjoying Da that they almost forgot how much they hate each other.

Over at Lopevi, the guys are lamenting the fact that they weren't able to win the challenge. Rory claims that Da could have provided them with "every creature comfort" that they needed, and...I'm not sure I would go that far. This isn't Gilligan's Island. Da doesn't make coconut televisions or curtains. Still, though, you have to feel for the guys as they sit around gnawing on plantains yet again. There's almost nothing I would want to munch on quite this often, and definitely not something that I most often hear described as "like a banana, but more potato-y." Chad confirms in an interview that morale is low, and that Travis, in particular, is not into the repetitive eating. Furthermore, Travis is missing his family fairly acutely. Travis glumly tells us that, indeed, his biggest concern while he's on the island is how the family is back at home. He wonders if they miss him, even though he's pretty sure they probably do. "My boys are my life," he says. In fact, they are his life to such a degree that he had to leave them for thirty-nine days to go and be on TV. ["Again, thank you. Does he love his kids as much as Jenna Morasca loved her DYING MOTHER?!" -- Wing Chun] It's my favorite argument. It's not that I think you're doing anything wrong by leaving your kids for that long -- heck, they'll live. It's the way people sit around and act like they've been taken from their kids, as opposed to having chosen to do a fun, frivolous activity away from their kids.