Can Republican, Democratic senators get along on a deserted island?

Two freshmen U.S. senators from opposite sides of the political aisle said Thursday they survived and even cooperated while spending a week marooned together on a remote island for a new reality show, "Rival Survival."

New Mexico Democrat Martin Heinrich and Arizona Republican Jeff Flake said they hope their adventure, scheduled to air Oct. 29 on Discovery Channel, inspires their colleagues in Washington to work together.

"Both of us know just how frustrated people are with Washington," the two said in a joint statement. "We decided to do something completely out of the ordinary and frankly a little extreme to show the world and our colleagues that even if you have serious differences, if you want to survive you have to work together."

Discovery says the show was filmed on the island of Eru in the Marshall Islands while Congress was on its August break.

Discovery describes the island "as an utterly unforgiving deserted destination where the reefs alone are fraught with dangers that include venomous stonefish, lionfish and scorpion fish."

Heinrich, a progressive Democrat, said the conservative Flake approached him with the idea for the show a few weeks after they spent hours on the Senate floor during a budget debate sharing photos of vacations, including two that Flake took to the Marshall Islands.

"Our first thought was just to go and take a few Go-Pro cameras and film it and document it or hand it over to someone," Flake said Thursday. "We wanted to show that Republicans and Democrats can get along and survive together. Then we approached Discovery because they have a number of survivor shows and they said, well, we like the idea but how about you let us come film it?

"Whoever is going to lead the Senate going forward is going to do so with a very slim margin," Flake added. "The parties are going to need to work together, so we wanted to get this out before the election, now's a good time to show it."

The August trip marks the third known trip taken to the region by Flake. He took a similar trip during the Memorial Day weekend last year with his two sons to Biggarenn, an unoccupied island that Flake estimated was just 55 to 70 acres in size. Flake and his sons, Tanner and Dallin, filmed the experience on a Go-Pro camera.

When he took his trip five years ago, Flake set up camp on Jabonwod, an island just a third of a mile long and 100 yards wide at high tide. He carried just a few items: A mask, fins and a pole-spear, a manual desalination pump, a magnifying glass to help start fires with the sun, a hammock for sleeping, a knife, hatchet, sunscreen, cooking pot, salt and pepper - and a satellite phone, just in case.

"At first I thought it was crazy," Heinrich said of this most recent trip. "But then I thought the idea of contrasting us working together when the national election is in full swing actually makes a bit of sense."

The senators were each allowed to pick three survival items from what Discovery called a modest list, then were forced to jump from a boat and swim to shore with just those items and the clothes on their backs.

"It was hard," Heinrich said. "It was full-on survival."

In advance of the show, Heinrich was only allowed to reveal one of the items chosen: a machete, which he said was crucial for cracking coconuts on the island with no fresh water source.

"I won't be drinking coconut water for a while," he said. "I think that trend is over for me."

Discovery Channel says the journey will air as a one-episode series on Oct. 29 at 9 p.m. CT. As the network describes it, the "senatorial adversaries" are turned into "survival teammates" and have to work together "as they attempt to spear fish, build shelter and find enough water to survive for one week. There is no natural source for fresh water on Eru, and what lives in the ocean will be their major food source. This unusual pairing will leave behind the daily life of congressional staff, Senate hearings and committee meetings to navigate the rigors of surviving on an isolated island with no contact with the outside world to call upon for help."