That's how David describes his experience of roughing it on a remote tropical beach.
"The mosquitoes were just eating us alive," he says. "I couldn't stand the amount of flies and the crazy extreme heat."
He also had just one set of clothes to wear.
"You just feel nasty, you feel dirty," the 30-year-old says.
He wasn't describing a boot camp. Instead, he was talking about his time on new BBC dating reality show, Stranded on Honeymoon Island.
Hosted by Davina McCall, it's like a cross between Love Island, Married at First Sight and Survivor.
Couples meet for just five minutes on a speed date before being matched up by experts, having a fake wedding and embarking on a honeymoon. Stranded on an island, and living in beach huts, they must learn to cope.
For some contestants, it was a lack of makeup or beauty products that broke them.
"I love my fake tan, I love my lashes," says Helen, 35. "Nothing could have prepared me for stripping it all back."
And then there were the loos.
"I was weeing on the beach," says a third contestant, 29-year-old Hannah. "I'm a festival girl, and I've seen festival toilets in better condition than what the island toilet was."
Hardly, then, the ideal circumstances in which to find love.
But that's the whole point of the show.
The idea is to discover whether love can thrive in isolation. So can it work?