'The Amazing Race 35's Elizabeth and Iliana Rivera Talk Getting out of "Mom Mode" and Becoming Best Friends

Elizabeth Rivera (L) and Iliana Rivera (R) from 'The Amazing Race 35'

Pack your bags, because The Amazing Race is back! Every week, Parade's Mike Bloom will bring you interviews with the team most recently eliminated from the race.

From the first step of The Amazing Race 35, Elizabeth and Iliana Rivera had to fight for their lives. They fell to the back of the pack before getting to the first task of the season, a section they never got out of during their time in the race. Despite navigational difficulties bringing them down, they were able to scrape by in Leg 1 by choosing to stick with their Detour. Unfortunately, that same choice brought them down in Leg 2. After they accidentally got dropped off at the wrong option, they decided to swap from gathering pomelos. Unfortunately it was another fruit that did them in, as a missing durian caused them to fall into last place, ending their time in the race.

Now out of the race, Elizabeth and Iliana talk with Parade.com about how their relationship changed racing together, the Detours that saved them and eliminated them, and how it felt to constantly be scrambling for survival.

Related: Everything to Know About The Amazing Race 35

To start, I would love to hear how you got onto the race. Iliana, I know you talked in the last episode about how you always wanted to travel together. Suffice it to say The Amazing Race is a very different type of travel. What made you want to come on?
Elizabeth Rivera: It was always my dream to get on it. So I always used to put the bug in her ear, "I want to do that." When you watch it at home on the sofa, I'm like, "I can do that." And then she just kind of executed and started applying. And she surprised me one day. She was like, "Mom, we have an interview at 5:00. Be here. Put your face on." And I'm like, [Sarcastically.] "Yeah, okay." So I show up at her house without my face on. And she's like, "Mom, get ready!" It was minutes before the interview. And I was in utter shock. I'm like, "Are you serious?" And honestly, I would never have done this with anybody else except her. I think she knows me the best. And she knows how to calm me down. And she did a good job.

Iliana, how did you feel about racing with your mother? As you mentioned at the end of last night's episode, you have to act more like friends and peers than a parent and child.
Iliana Rivera: It's crazy. Because she raised me, and we see each other in a certain light. And then to have to be thrown into The Amazing Race and have to figure out stuff together as a team was really amazing. And I think we worked really well together. I don't think anything that had to do with each other was the demise of what happened. I think we had that down. We did really good with that. It was other things. I'm older now; I'm 28. And we really see each other as friends and understand each other on a different level.
Elizabeth: On the show, I actually had a step down from being Mom. I told myself, "I'm not going to be that mom. I'm going to step down and let her kind of take over sometimes." Because I wanted to see how she would handle a lot of things. And it wasn't hard to do. At the market, I snapped. [Laughs.]

Well let's get into some of those "other things" you mentioned, Iliana, that led to you talking with me today. I find it so interesting that, in Leg 1, you chose not to swap Detours, and it saved you. Here, you get dropped off at the market by accident, choose not to swap, and you get eliminated because of it. Talk to me about that choice.
Iliana: We got dropped off at the market. And to be honest, if we didn't see Andrea and Malaina, I wouldn't even have known that we were at the market. I would have been looking for the pomelo still; I'd be looking for the boat. But the fact that we saw a team there, I was like, "Okay, we're at the market." I don't know where the miscommunication was. Maybe I pointed at the wrong one, but he dropped us off the market. And then we saw them there. And I was like, "Okay, this is good that there's a team here." We started at the same time, and I was like, "Okay, we need to do this. We can't waste time, and they'll find everything."
Elizabeth: And this is where Mama mode kicked in. Because I knew we were at the market. [Laughs.]
Iliana: I was like, "The boat's around here somewhere! They're here!"
Elizabeth: She kept saying the pomelos were all the way in the back. So to appease her, for about a minute, we ran around the back. I'm like, "Yeah, there's no boats here. We have to do the market." And she's like, "This is not the market." I said, "Iliana, let's go. This is the market!" It was so funny. Sometimes I had to reel her in.

So you knew you were passed by Andrea and Malaina at the market. But Robbin and Chelsea were doing the other Detour. After you finished, did you think you would be eliminated? Or did you hold out hope you'd get by on the skin of your teeth again?
Iliana: It's funny. The first leg, I was 100% positive that we were last. I went in there, and I looked at Phil, and I was like, "I know, I know." I was angry. I was not happy seeing Phil. Obviously, they don't show a lot of stuff. And I was having a tantrum going to Phil. I was like, "We're the first team out, right?" But the second time, I really thought we were in it. Because we came back from the lotuses, and two teams were there. And then Yeremi and Liam left right before us. So there were like four teams that were generally within 10 to 15 minutes of each other. And then when I saw Andrea and Maliana left first, I still had hope. I was like, there's no way [Robbin and Chelsea] are gonna finish the pomelo thing. How fast can you really do it?" So I had hope. They didn't tell us the end mat times, but they were like, "It was close. "
Elizabeth: Mine was complete opposite. First leg. I thought we were good. I felt it, and I was calm. And I kept telling her, "Stop it. I don't want to hear that. Stop thinking like that." She said, "We're gone." And I'm like, "I need you to stop that." [Laughs.] And then when we got there we were safe. The second leg, she was positive. And I was like, "Oh, something doesn't feel right." And the minute they rejected our grocery order, I literally had the other team in my head. I had Robbin and Chelsea wrapping up, getting in the car. And then we had to get that one item. And that was it for me.
Iliana: When we were getting checked out the first time, Malaina and Andrea were literally waiting right behind us. And I was praying. I was like, "If they get one thing wrong, we have a chance." But we didn't get it. They got it right after. And we honestly found our mistake very quickly. But even still those few minutes just threw us off.

You two were very clearly in survival mode from the very beginning. Once you got lost getting to that first Roadblock you were basically always competing to avoid last. Did that change your approach to the race at all?
Iliana: It is the worst pressure ever. But honestly, I feel like me being a therapist really helped a lot with my mindset. The whole time, we never really freaked out. We were relatively calm. And, at the end of the day, there were some stupid mistakes. But we did the best we could. And having the mindset of, "This is what we're given. This is what's happening, These are the cards that were dealt, and you have to make the best of it and do the best that we can." You can't get caught in the like, "Oh, we're in the back. This sucks," having anxiety about it. We need to try to stay afloat right now and have the mindset that we can do this.
Elizabeth: And we never talked about that. "Oh my god, we're at the end." That never happened. Watching The Amazing Race, you've seen some underdogs win the whole thing. You've seen people not make first place ever and win the whole thing. So that was always in my mind. And I didn't want to give her that energy either. So I never brought it up. Our thing is, "Listen, let's just do it. We have to get there. We made a couple of errors and not even on us, really. I think [with] the tuk-tuk we asked him to take us to this place. He took us to the back of the building. Everybody else got dropped off in the front of the building. So now here we are running trying to find where that was. And then we asked a couple of people for directions. They gave us completely different directions. The language barrier was very very hard. And we had to be patient, because, their country, their language. So here we are trying to explain everything.
Iliana: On the show, it looks like we're getting so lost. We're really trying! We're not dumb. We're trying to get these directions and try to go to this place. In Thailand, after the tuk-tuk situation, we got dropped off where we were supposed to be, looking for the clue. We couldn't find it anywhere. And this was when we were ahead of Liam and Yeremi for two seconds. And then we get there, we finally find it, and we see the boys. [It] looks like they have a friggin red carpet rolled out to the front. The princesses just trotting out with their clue after we looked for 20 minutes.
Elizabeth: And then they turn around and gave a little smile. [Laughs.]
Iliana: And then we're both going to the massage place. I'm like, "Let's follow them. And my mom's like, "We can't keep up with them. They're gone in three seconds." [Laughs.]
Elizabeth: You blink, they were gone.

You talked about this a bit earlier, but I would love to hear from each of you what you learned most about your partner after working together in a very different way than you're used to.
Elizabeth: When I said initially that I had to step down from being a mother, I wanted to see how she would handle high-stress situations. That was my big thing. I come from a career in high-stress situations. So I knew that I was going to try and remain calm, especially for her. Because you don't want your partner to feed that negative energy. So I wanted to see how she was going to handle it. The tuk-tuk threw me for a loop. There was an incident where she was questioning if a tuk-tuk was a tuk-tuk. And I'm like, "It's a tuk-tuk!" [Laughs.] So it was a little bit hard for me not to step up. Because I was in a supervisory role. It was always very hard for me to not be like, "Stop, I need you to just do this." I wanted really to see how she would handle it. And she handled it very well. And I was very impressed. So I feel good now that she can handle a lot of things that will be thrown in her life.
Iliana: And I've always known my mom is a very strong woman. She's very strong-willed physically, emotionally, with her career, and the way she raised us. She makes everything happen for my brother and I. So I've always known that, but it's nice to go into this next phase of life, as I get a little bit older, as best friends and equals. She taught me everything she could. I'm happy that she's confident in the person that I am now. And now we get to just travel, be besties, and just hang out like friends.
Elizabeth: Well, I'm always gonna be your mother. I'll tell you that anyway. [Laughs.]
Iliana: I know. I love you!
Elizabeth: We also said that we're gonna start taking trips together. 

Do you want to go back to Thailand?
Elizabeth: We'd love to! I really enjoyed that massage, believe it or not. The next day, your body feels so relaxed. They take all the kinks out. I might open one of those businesses in Florida.

Next, read our interview with Alexandra and Sheridan Lichtor, who were eliminated in The Amazing Race 35 premiere.