01x03 - Costa Rica

[bunniefuu]

They're starting to get bitten all over.

And it wasn't mosquitoes, I'll tell you
that much.

And scorpions, tarantulas this big...

Costa Rica lies on the Pacific coast of
Central America, a region known for its

radical dictators, beach resorts,
and dense jungle.

Few places in the world exist with such
incredible biological variety.


mammals, 116 reptiles and

amphibians, and more
than 6,000 species of insects.

It was minus 40 degrees
Celsius with 4 feet of snow when I

left my Ontario home and
boarded a plane for Central America.

And it was plus 40 degrees Celsius when I
landed.

There are still many miles
of uninhabited coastline and

many thousand hectares
of deep, impenetrable jungle.

I've got seven days to survive here.

And this time, I have to find my own way
to safety.

The crew isn't coming for me.

But first, I have to find
a good source of fresh

water, or I could collapse
of dehydration in the heat.

There is a fine line between a land of
paradise and a land of nightmares.

And so it happens.

And so easily, too.

You borrow a kayak from a beach resort for
the day.

Head out a little unprepared.

Maybe the ocean pushes you farther than
you thought it would.

Or you just hop at a beach to explore a
nice cove.

And when you're not watching, the tide
takes away your only link to survival.

So that's it, then.

My camera crew will leave me behind with
just my gear.

And I'm alone for seven days of survival.

All right, let's get a grip on my
situation here.

I'm many, many miles from the resort that
I paddled from.

I've got dense, thick, thick jungle in
behind me.

Thousands of miles of ocean in front of
me, trapping me in here.

The beach is a nice beach.

It's, you know, by all standards,
it's a little tropical paradise.

Not necessarily so when you don't have
food or water.

So let's see what the camera crew left me
with this time.

Along my long pair of pants.

Just gonna help me at night.

My swimming goggles.

They were actually on me as I kayaked in.

And three pens.

For whatever.

Write down my sorrows or something.

And I always carry with me.

Good multi-tool.

First, I want to have a look around.

I'm a frost-bitten Canadian boy.

And this is all very new to me.

Right now, it's in high tide.

But I can see that as the water goes down,
I have a whole set of tile pools here.

I'll be able to, hopefully, trap some fish
in.

Well, I've found a number of things just
scrounging along the beach.

Man-made and natural.

Things I can use.

It's a good big piece of bamboo and
there's a bit more of this around.

There's a lot of these four-by-fours that
are worn down.

Found this little broom handle.

And just now, a toilet float.

I don't know what I can use that for.

I've also been able to find a number of
these green coconuts.

It is a tropic, so these are going to come
in handy.

Let me show you right now what I mean.

These coconuts are a great way to quench
your thirst.

You want to just cut in, maybe somewhere
around the top.

Pure, fresh, whoops, clean coconut milk.

Oh, that's good.

That was tough to get through.

These are lying around all over the place.

At least they'll quench my thirst for a
while.

But I still need to find some fresh water.

In this heat, I'm not thinking about
shelter at all.

But I know that weather can turn ugly on
me very fast.

Well, that's about all I can do for
tonight.

Make this platform, keep me up off the
sand.

Sand is a real irritant.

It gets into everything.

Including this infected toe that I have.

The week before this, I did a lot of
hiking and I've got a badly infected toe.

And the worst thing for it is to get sand
in it.

It'll get more infected and more
irritated.

On top of that, of course,
there's hundreds of these

little hermit crabs crawling
around on the sand.

I don't want them nibbling up my toes all
night either.

Maybe tomorrow I'll try to
increase my food supply, find a

better source for water if
possible, and try to make a fire.

The coves and beaches of Costa Rica are an
idyllic paradise, but like a massive green

wall, the thick crawling jungle has me
trapped between it and the ocean.

I'm alone here for seven days without
matches, water, food, or equipment.

And I've got a feeling
that my version of Gilligan's

Island is going to be far
more difficult to survive.

Well, that was a rough night.

Not only was this wood a little back
breaking to try and sleep on, the hermit

crabs pretty much left me alone,
but there was a whole host of crawling

things and sand fleas and c*ck and
creepy crawlies.

They wanted to inspect me all night long.

I need some water.

A.

little bit of trickling in behind me
amongst this.

Wack of caves here, it's just amazing.

Crabs running all over the place.

More tide pools with fish.

I must have walked right over this,
I didn't even notice it the first time.

This is promising.

The water, there's like a stream coming just
right out of the sand at the bottom end.

So, I'm going to see what comes out, if
there's anything coming out at the top end.

It looks like a substantial amount.

It should be fresh water.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, perfect.

Back on.

It's fresh water, alright.

And I would love to just gorge on it right
now, but jungle water makes me nervous.

It can be full of the meanest of
parasites.

So, really I should take
this back and find a way to

get a fire and boil it so
I can k*ll any parasites.

What a lot of people don't
know is that on the inside

of these sprouted coconuts,
there's a nice edible treat.

It's just a little tough to get to.

The coconut is a lifesaver in all of its
stages, even after it's sprouted.

This inside of the sprouted coconut shell,
I guess it's the liquid solidified.

Anyway...

Mmm.

It's a juicy, delectable treat.

Mmm.

Flavorful.

And you know what?

Trust me.

Mmm.

At home, I actually don't really like
coconut.

Nice place for me to be.

I don't like coconut.

But this, it's delicious.

And...

You can almost and sometimes a little bit
even drink the oils that drip out of this.

All the pure, pure coconut oil.

Wow.

That's delicious.

Oh no.

This is energy I need.

I better take the time to make my shelter
better in case bad weather comes in quick.

I've gathered a few things from the beach.

This curled stick.

Picked up a baseboard along the beach and
I've already cut my notch into it so that

all the ash can fall out there into my
tinder bundle.

Which is just a bit of dried grass.

And I'm gonna use that broom handle.

Makes a perfect spindle.

And this very cool rock I found on the
beach has got perfect holes in it.

Give me my bearing block.

Well, all I can do is give this a shot.

That smoke, that's good.

Good, good, good, good, good, good.

Let's close this in.

I figure I can find a big enough shell to
boil water in.

There's a lot of conch shells along the
ocean floor.

And this one is just the right size.

There we go.

Isn't that beautiful?

Something I can boil water in now.

With this beautiful fire behind me,
I've got the opportunity now that I've...

Oop, a little bit of sand.

That I've got this conch
shell and the water

that I brought back from
the stream over there.

Now, I've been drinking coconut water all
day.

Maybe five or six of them.

And so I'm still extremely thirsty.

That's not enough in this heat.

So I can...

Oop, oop, oop, oop, oop, oop.

There we go.

So I can boil this up.

Bring it to a boil and k*ll any parasites
that are in there.

I can find all kinds of food in a tide
pool.

Nerites are edible snails that cling to
the rocks.

But they're only edible if the water that
comes out of them is clear.

If it's a green liquid, eating just one of
these little guys could k*ll me.

Crack these guys open.

Wow.

Pretty strong.

And... Pull out the snail.

Not a moment too late, I should add, because
the sun's setting pretty quickly here.

The thing is, I could only go in and get
these...

Tide pool critters once the tide went
down, because the... Water was that high.

I just couldn't... couldn't get in there
to get them.

There's that.

And there's this... Hard.

Ooh.

Little bone.

On there.

All right.

I'm gonna pop that in and let it boil for
a while.

Let them cook.

It boiled up pretty quick for me.

Which means that from here on in I can
keep gathering water from that stream and

just boil it, let it cool, boil it, let it
cool, and I'll have... Purified water.

Ugh.

Getting smoke in my face here.

Well, they don't taste all that great,
but...

It's meat.

It's gonna give me a little bit of food
strength anyway.

It's good to get fresh water.

Another morning.

You don't sleep much.

I'm not sleeping much.

You know, the tide, the waves, they come
to within like three feet of this platform.

And it really freaks
you out at night because

it's just thundering
in like a big monster.

I don't know what's
worse, that fear or the

fact that you've got sand
fleas and mosquitoes.

They just bite you all night long.

I'm not really sleeping.

I've got my long pants on to protect my
legs.

The crabs crawl up on me every once in a
while too, but they don't do.

They just flick them off.

Still, they keep you awake.

Yeah, it's great to have the fire.

But you know, it's 80 degrees at night,


Waves of humidity coming and going.



And the only way to quench my thirst other
than the odd coconut is to boil up a

little bit of water in that conch shell
and drink it down lukewarm.

The crabs of the tide pools are elusive
and move very fast.

But this part of the ocean is full of
fish, so it's simple really.

Find a way to catch them.

I'm laying all my stuff out and I'm just
stand back and trying to figure out what

else I could make or do with the clothing
that I've got.

I've still got laces for my boots if I
need them.

Pants.

My Scooby-Doo underwear.

And a shirt.

Check this out.

Grab the stick.

Come up in the jungle.

And just starting to thinking about,
like, sort of projectile.

Take the elastic band from Scooby-Doo.

Let's try this.

Aha!

That could be a fish.

It seems so likely that I could spear a
fish right from the rocks edge.

But I've never done this before.

And the timing of it is tricky.

I think I stand a much
better chance of getting

a fish if I get right in
the water with them.

All right.

I got my underwater camera.

And I got some cameras set up to try and
show you where I'm going to be fishing.

With any luck, I'll come out victorious.

I'm keeping my clothes on.

I'm going to sacrifice getting them wet.

They're soaked all the time anyway.

Because it'll help to protect me from
jellyfish.

And if I get thrashed up against any rough
coral, it'll help protect.

Wish me luck.

I'm.

really nervous about this.

I've already spotted sharks.

Big ones.

Coming in for the same fish I was going
after.

It's going to take Patience and effort to
be successful at this.

It's.

right below me here.

Look at that, baby.

Not sure what it's called.

I think it's called some kind of porgy or
something like that.

I'm going to clean this guy.

I was taking a bit of
a chance going out

spearfishing, but hey, I
don't have a fishing line.

And it's certainly paid off.

Being out spearfishing like
that and, you know, the blood

that happens when you catch
a fish attracts a lot of sharks.

So, taking a little bit of a chance,
but, whew, it was worth it.

Have myself a real good dinner.

And a full moon to eat by, too.

This is going to bring back a lot of food
energy to me.

After three days
without food, you really,

you really start to
lose your energy level.

I mean, I've had tidbits here and there.

The coconut's been amazing.

That's actually what's kept me going.

But having good, fresh fish like this is
incredible.

Incredible.

God, perfect.

More people have been stung by
scorpions by simply not checking

their boots in the morning
than just about any other way.

The little critters like to crawl up
inside there.

Even when you leave them
hanging upside down like

this on a stick, they
still can get in there.

You've got to give them a good whomp and
check them and make sure.

Because man, oh man,
slipping your foot into a boot and

having a scorpion down
at the toes, that's not good.

I have two options this week.

Wait for the crew to come
and get me or dare to find

my own way back to
civilization, through the jungle.

Understand this.

Many, if not most, survival
victims ignore common sense and

out of desperation even refuse
to believe their compasses.

And in so doing, try to self-rescue.

Often, placing themselves in even more
peril.

The smartest thing in a case like this
would be to stay on the beach.

But hey, then we wouldn't have a survival
show.

The jungle's there, but
maybe there's a road,

maybe there's a trail
just up in behind me here.

I mean, I could be literally hours maybe
from being rescued.

That's what I'm gonna do.

Head into the jungle and see if I can find
a trail out.

If I'm gonna take off
and leave this beach, I'm

gonna need to somehow
bring the fire with me.

I'm certainly gonna bring
my fire bulb materials, and I

can maybe cut this down to
size a bit to reduce the weight.

Because, you know, it's heavy,
heavy wood.

But I can also make kind of a fire bundle.

If I take a coconut, one of these hollow
coconuts, lots of them lying around,

and there's tons of all this coconut
fiber.

And this stuff is really good.

It'll hold an Ember.

And fill up the cup.

Make a little indentation in there.

And simply find myself a coal I can break
off.

And put in there.

And all I have to do is just keep that
sort of smoldering while I walk.

And the hope is that I won't have to try
to...

I won't have to resort to the fire bowl
again tonight.

And I can just blow this into flame in the
jungle.

So...

We will see.

If I take the chance of
road-finding in the jungle,

I could be lost a lot
longer than seven days.

And I still have to haul all my camera
gear with me.

It's.

a good thing.

If you stop sweating, you're basically in
the stage of the sea hydration.

So at least for the
moment... I'm still sweating.

Profusely, as it were.

The temperature in the jungle can go well
over 100 degrees.

And the humidity is stifling.

This vine looks familiar.

Looks just like the grape vine from back
home.

You know, all habitats have their plants
that store water.

The Costa Rican jungle is no exception.

This is called water vine.

Oh!

There are monkeys right above me here.

Oh, damn.

I just sliced my finger open.

And it wasn't even worth it.

Because this vine is too thin.

To drip for me.

That was just plain stupid.

Looking up to... A couple of silly
monkeys throwing things at me.

Oh!

And I end up...

I hit the bone with the knife.

I could feel... Like that.

Just that feeling of going in deep.

It stopped bleeding.

I just... Kept it
pressed for a while.

And, uh...

Just... With my mouth.

Just kept it... Held tight.

But, uh... Man, that hurt.

That was stupid.

And there was no even...
Not even any payoff.

There was no water in the vine.

For goodness sakes.

So I'm gonna just make a bandage out of...

My... Scooby-Doo underwear.

Try and keep the dirt out of this thing.

Infection in the jungle is one of the most
insidious circumstances to deal with.

It can just leave you in agony.

After a day of trudging through
the jungle... I'm exhausted.

And I really don't know where I'm going.

And now, it's getting dark.

It's... Too dark to...

Do anything else.

And you know, there's no reason for me to
make one of those...

One of my sort of famous Canadian
shelters.

I make a big nice A-framing crawling
underneath.

It's 80 to 90 degrees every night.

I don't need to stay warm.

I don't even need to stay dry.

It's got a chance of me catching
hypothermia here.

And it's already getting way too dark.

Ow!

Something's crawling on me.

I'm nervous as anything about...

Snakes and peccaries
and... Jaguars and...

Monster tarantulas...
Crawling on me.

But... So... This is the best I
can do to get up off the ground.

Is this big falling over tree.

There's my fire.

I packed it.

I thought it was going to keep smoldering.

And I had it.

Anyway, it's gone out.

I do not have the energy or the will.

Just to start a fire.

Although it would make me feel a lot
more...

Safe and secure.

Massive colonies of leaf cutter ants all
around me.

They're harmless.

The leaf cutter ants don't do anything.

But they're kind of funny.

They make their own highways.

If you drop something in front of it.

They'll all band together.

And they'll move it out of the way.

It'll leave for a stick or something.

So they can have their trail back.

Quite, quite spectacular.

Got two more of these.

Let's hope I find some sort of jungle
stream.

And soon.

You know, at night...

The forest just comes alive.

The whole ground begins to move.

Crabs and spiders and snakes.

Everything comes alive.

This is horrible.

I'm gonna do the fireball tomorrow night
for sure.

Everything moves.

Everything is crawling.

I think there's army ants on the tree.

Because they're starting to get bitten all
over.

And it wasn't mosquitoes, I'm gonna tell
you that much.

And scorpions.

Tarantulas this big.

This is all I can do.

Sit and wait.

Like a sitting duck.

Picture this.

You're in a business suit.

Done up tight.

You step into a hot sauna.

You begin to exercise vigorously.

That's travel through the jungle.

There's no break from the humidity and the
oppressive heat.

And just breathing makes you sweat.

I hardly slept at all last night.

Mostly because... It
wasn't the mosquitoes.

I thought the mosquitoes would terrorize
me.

It was the creepy crawlies.

It was everything on the ground.

Ants and spiders as big as my hands.

And...

Just... Just never ending.

Never ending.

It's land crabs.

Even.

You can feel the forest floor.

Hear the forest floor moving.

I don't want to have another night in the
jungle.

Huh.

The monkeys are throwing stuff at me
again.

Jeez.

I think the worst part
of that... With my finger.

Ah.

I've got the bandage off it so that it can
dry in the breeze.

Ay, ay, ay.

I walked for hours yesterday.

And hours and hours again today.

I'm using the sun to keep my direction.

Try to keep some sort of a straight
direction.

But it... To go
around problem areas.

The craziest part about walking through a
thick jungle like this...

Is you actually have to watch where you
put every single step.

One palm viper.

One furlong.

One bush master.

Lunges out of here.

Oh man.

I'd be in a big mess of trouble then.

Yeah, sure.

Come to Costa Rica for a survival thing.

To a seven days survival in Costa Rica,
that would be a good place.

I have a word with my pretty friend.

I'm curious when I get home.

Let me tell you.

Now it's day five.

And I'm still trying to find my way out.

I'm really not sure where I am.

But the only advantage to this heat is I
don't feel hungry at all.

Heat's just taking my appetite right away.

On the beach it was a lot easier,
to say the least.

I had all those coconuts to eat.

In here I just don't feel like eating at
all.

I've been walking in the jungle for almost
two days now.

I don't see any sign of trails or roads.

I'm starting to think I'll be here for
another night.

And I'm second guessing my decision to
come into the jungle at all.

So along the way, I just
took a thinner branch than my

walking stick, using it like
a switch and whack, whack.

And was able to get myself a meal for
tonight.

Got myself... Huh.

A little lizard to eat tonight.

Mmm.

I hate the thought of k*lling anything.

It's the last thing I would advise.

But as a matter of survival, all creatures
are fair game.

All right.

Here he is.

Well, since I'm not actually staying put
and setting up a bunch of traps,

which is what you would do, because I'm
trying to find a path, at least I know I

can eat a few little small critters along
the way.

This little four-striped whip tail will at
least give me a little bit of food energy.

Mmm.

I don't know.

Hmm.

Not bad.

Just not gonna eat the head.

Don't ask me why.

Just don't want to eat the head.

Better than nothing.

But I'm getting hungry.

I missed my coconuts.

Two nights now in the jungle.

I need to be able to find my way out in
the next two days.

Where I come from, there's poison Ivy.

And that's it as far as problem plants.

Here, you gotta be really careful about
what you brush up against.

Something I haven't
had to do since for at least

about four days now,
is go to the washroom.

So before I do, I'm gonna test out a
couple of leaves.

The way I can do this, is break it open.

Rub it on my skin.

One spot on my arm here.

Break open this other type of leaf.

Do the same thing.

Right here.

Let the juice get on there.

And this one big leaf.

The same thing with it.

Rub it on this arm.

I know which leaf I was putting in what
spot.

Get off me.

Rub that on there.

And basically, wait about...

Oh, I don't know.

Wait about a couple of hours, or an hour,
something like that.

And if I find that I break
out in a bad rash, then

that's not the leaf I'm gonna
be using for anything else.

At least one of the good things about the
jungle, is that in spite of this intense

heat, there's very little sunny areas like
what I'm standing in right now.

Mostly, it's just all shade, which at
least helps a bit.

Last one.

From here on in, it's jungle water only.

Yeah, it's a long ways down, but there's
definitely a river down there.

From here, a bit of a rain
wash I'm coming down, I can

hear both the ocean and
I can hear a river flowing.

You know what?

The river's gotta lead to the ocean.

I'm gonna follow it and hope that it takes
me the heck out of here.

Oh, yeah.

And it's cold too.

Oh, cool.

I'm still taking my chances drinking from
a stream like this.

Yeah.

But that's good.

The blastocysts and the amoebas and the
type of parasites that can happen in these

waters can lay you up for months in the
hospital.

So, I'm definitely taking my chances.

But dehydration is a lot more immediate at
the moment.

Oh, well, the humidity is wreaking havoc
on my camera gear.

Ruining different components and
microphones and stuff.

I was already in once, but I'm gonna go
right back in again.

This is the only way of bringing your body
core temperature down.

Completely immerse yourself, because I am
way overheated.

I'm too dangerously close to heat stroke.

Oh, and the water is wonderfully cold.

Oh, God, that's good.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, that's much better.

It brings life right back into you.

As long as something doesn't bite you.

After walking around without a real idea
of direction, filming myself and hauling

heavy camera gear, I'm getting completely
discouraged.

I'm supposed to be a survival expert
making a film, but at this point,

all I feel is very, very down.

Yet, it's funny how fast my circumstances
can change.

Down the river, the paradise found.

I'm back at the ocean.

Two nights in the jungle was enough for
me.

I'm just gonna follow the shore from now
on, make my way to hopefully a little

fishing village or something around the
coast.

But I'm not going back in this jungle.

Lesson learned there.

Don't try to find your way out of it by
going through the jungle.

This is a lot easier.

I gotta keep an eye out as
well on the tides as I go along

here if I'm gonna stay
anywhere at night on the beach.

Because here in the
Pacific, in this part of the

Pacific, there's sort of
what's called a mixed tide.

You get very high
tides and very low tides,

moderately high tides
and moderately low tides.

Point being that the tides change.

So you gotta be careful where you lie down
for the night.

Or you could be swimming before morning.

But at least now I can't get lost.

You always know which way you're going
when you follow the coastline.

I had looked forward to
surviving on a beach, but I hadn't

counted on the intense heat,
bugs, and humidity of the jungle.

Hey, right now I'm even looking forward to
seeing some snow.

From the looks of things, I have found
paradise.

Oh, yeah.

In fact, there's one big beautiful beach.

And there's a couple of boats.

Woo!

Hey, whoo!

Couldn't have been better timing.

And this is the second one.