The weather details are earlier in this thread, but basically it is one of those dry season/wet season sorts of places. The cool wet weather in the middle of the game was atypical. Normal weather would have been hot and dry throughout shooting. ("Dry" in terms of weather meaning "not raining", not in terms of environment meaning desert.)

I'm thinking since it didn't get miserable until mid-game, the folks left around at that point were pretty serious about competing. Hopefully Probst doesn't spend too much of his pre-season promotion time talking about how tough it was for the crew.