SEXY Cara Zavaleta from last year’s “Road Rules” (South Pacific) is Playboy’s Miss November thanks to the show, but thinks MTV should take hike.

“The best thing to come out of ‘Road Rules’ and MTV was Playboy,” Zavaleta, 24, told The Post. “It’s a great experience on ‘Road Rules’ to meet new people and challenge yourself physically and mentally on the show, but I just have a better taste in my mouth with Playboy, I feel so much better – it’s been liberating.”

On MTV, Zavaleta – who grew up in Bowling Green, Ohio – was sent on the adventure of a lifetime, island hopping around the South Pacific, but she had to live in a cramped micro-RV with five other teammates and eventually got voted off.

“I had bigger expectations about what [the MTV experience] would be, I thought it was such a great thing on ‘Road Rules’ and in the end I was like ‘this is it?’ I was dirty and mad all the time and after it happened they just kind of never called us again,” she says. “MTV just lets you kind of fall off the face of the earth.”

To get into the magazine, she called the editors, told them who she was and wanted to know if they were interested in having her pose for a reality show pictorial. But when she met with them, they suggested she might be Playmate material.

Zavaleta is not the first girl to jump from MTV to Playboy. Thrishelle Canatella from “Real World” (Vegas), Arissa Hill from “Real World” (Vegas), Jisela Delgado (“Road Rules X”) have also posed for the magazine.

And Mary Beth Decker appeared as a Cybergirl of the month on the magazine’s Web site before she became Zavaleta’s castmate on “Road Rules” (South Pacific).