I am Bear Grylls.
I've served with the British Special Forces,
climbed to the summit of Mount Everest,
and crossed the frozen oceans of the Arctic.
Now, I am in Ecuador,
a country of extreme jungle and mountains.
Every year, hundreds have to be rescued from its harsh landscape.
I am going to show the skills needed to survive here.
Ecuador,
a country the size of Nevada,
is home to the world's longest mountain range,
and the world's biggest and most impenetrable jungle,
the Amazon.
Last year, over a million people
came to experience this vast wilderness,
where time has stood still for millennia.
Many still get lost in the mountains and jungles,
needing to be rescued.
I am going to paraglide into this wilderness
and I am going to need all my skills to survive.
All I have is a water bottle, a knife and a flint.
A camera crew will follow my journey.
I am 13,000 feet up in the Andes
and it is just beautiful.
I am surrounded by some of the most spectacular mountains
in the world.
But it is cold up here, just a few degrees above freezing,
and the air is thin,
which means flying helicopters up here is dangerous.
So the way, I'm going in, is by paraglider.
Here goes.
Using the rising air currents, I am going to fly over the Andes,
in the hope of landing somewhere close
to the Amazon jungle.
(SCREAMING)
The Andes are just immense,
stretching over four and a half thousand miles from north to south.
It has some of the world's highest and most active volcanoes here.
These changing air currents are taking me down over the paramo,
high altitude marshes that cover most of this area.
Not a place I want to be.
Whoa, this is going to be fast coming in.
Look at that, if you can see,
this is just like waist-deep horrible stuff.
But it is cold up here
and I need to get out of this bog as quickly as possible.
It is thick, horrible sludge.
This is not a good start.
I am still roughly 12,000 feet up
and the temperature is just above freezing.
Being wet and cold at this altitude is a killer combination.
Below me is mile upon mile of dense high altitude jungle,
which, because of its height, is known as cloud forest.
Below them is the hot and humid Amazon jungle.
I am going to head down towards the jungle,
as I know that's where the tributaries
of the mighty River Amazon will be,
and where there is a river there is often people and safety.
Look at this huge, huge valley.
And it is just cloud forest
as far as I can see,
and even though it is beautiful,
it is also quite demoralising.
That just means more hard work.
Still soaking wet and I am cold, and I am about 12,000 feet up here
and the danger is just exposure and hypothermia
and I know from experience that both of those can come on very quickly.
It is a lethal combination, the cold, wet and altitude
and guys, I really need to be heading down fast.
Every 1,000 feet lower I get
means it is about two degrees warmer.
I must have come down now at least 2,000 feet,
probably about 10,000 feet here.
It is raining
but I am beginning to see some of these trees,
which is a good sign for me,
it means I am probably not far off the cloud forest below,
so I am going to keep moving.
But moving at altitude is tough.
Up here, at 10,000 feet,
there is 15 percent less oxygen than at sea level.
You forget just how hard work it is,
moving at altitude.
And beneath me are these clumps of cloud forest,
but that is good news,
that is probably my best chance of finding shelter
and some decent food.
It is astonishing how quickly the vegetation can change.
It is 20 degrees warmer and it is like entering a new world.
It is a lush yet eerie place.
As the warm air comes up from the tropical low lands,
it condenses and you get this area,
for about 8,000 to about 10,000 feet,
where it is just solid just cloud and rain.
And it's just so still around here, you can't hear anything
apart from just the pitter-patter of the rain.
Look how wet everything is, look at this.
Look at this, you can just pull all of this stuff,
a masses of it off and it's probably,
yeah look at that, full of water,
and I'll definitely find a stream lower down.
But there is also this like
just smell of rotting wood as if the whole place is just decaying.
The cloud forest is far more abundant than the grassland.
The temperate and damp conditions
are home to 1,000 of different plant and animal species.
Look at this guy I've just found on the forest floor.
It is a caecilian,
and these guys normally live underground, just feeding off worms
and stuff. But because it is so wet here,
it has been raining so much,
he's literally forced up to the surface.
And that is just amazing
to actually come across one of these.
Although it looks like a snake, it is actually a legless lizard,
and it lives off worms, spiders and insects.
And we're gonna let him go
and get back to it.
He might look good to eat,
but he has poisonous glands under his skin,
so he's not going to be my lunch.
I know from my time in the Army just how slow jungle moving can be.
You know and sometimes it would take,
you know take all day just to move like a mile
and in this sort of stuff, you can just see why.
It's easy to end up going around
and around in circles in these dense forests.
In 1986,
a team of treasure hunters came to the cloud forest
in search of Inca gold.
Legend says, the last Emperor, Atawalpa,
ordered tons of it to be hidden in Ecuador's cloud forest.
It is thought the treasure hunters died
after becoming completely disorientated.
Their bodies were discovered just half a mile from their camp.
Jaguars and snakes live in the forests, but they are rare.
The more deadly killers are the plants.
This is a phyllotis mushroom this and these are poisonous
and nasty and if I ate this,
this could destroy my kidneys in 24 hours
and really, in the wilds, you do not want to take any chances.
Unless you are an expert in mushrooms and toadstools,
your best thing to do is stay clear of them.
The toxins are so deadly that once consumed,
there is no antidote or cure.
I am going straight down hill.
This is the best way to find the river.
But the going is painfully slow.
The warm and damp conditions means plants grow up to 20 feet a year,
that's fast.
And the vines can form such dense screens
you can hardly see in front of you.
I just got completely tangled in all this stuff.
And do you know what? Sometimes you just grind to a halt.
I can't afford to waste energy pushing through this.
I've got to find a better way.
Suddenly the dense undergrowth gives way to a narrow channel.
This was probably cut into the earth
by hundreds of years of water erosion.
It's like an express freeway through the jungle
that could lead to a river.
But the river bed leads to what looks like a cave.
Let's have a look in here.
Caves like this are forbidding places,
but I have got to stick to my plan of following this channel.
Something flying around up there.
I am in a narrow cave, in Ecuador,
that I hope will lead me to a jungle stream,
but I am not alone.
Hey look, put the night vision on, put that on.
You see those?
Yeah, look they are bats, just hundreds of them.
You can feel their wings just flap past my head.
And they are such extraordinary flyers,
just flying all on sonar.
These spear nosed bats live in colonies of around 5,000.
There are so many here I could probably grab one,
but I don't want to do that because if I got, got bit by one,
they carry a risk of rabies.
The stench in here is almost unbearable.
The floor of this cave is covered in guano, or bat droppings.
The fumes are highly toxic
and it's a breeding ground for biting insects.
I want to get out of this cave here.
If there is one thing I really don't like its bats.
Yeah, I need to find a better place.
And that's back into the dense cloud forest.
(GROANS)
This is what I was hoping for, a creek
and I can follow this all the way down, hopefully to a river.
And these creeks
and rivers really are the highways of the forest.
And as I follow the stream down,
the noise of crashing water gets progressively louder.
There is no mistaking this sound,
White water.
Yeah, look at this.
This fast flowing river comes straight
from the snow-capped Andes.
It's glacial and freezing cold.
It demands a huge amount of respect these sort of streams,
they are very, very powerful
and you've got to be very careful moving along the bank
where it's slippy.
But it could lead me to the Amazon,
where hopefully I'll find people.
There is always food to eat in the forest if you know where to look
and if you look at this orchid here.
This is actually one of my favourite orchids
because it is easy to identify.
It is called a brown spotted yellow orchid
because it has got brown spots and it is yellow.
But what is great about it is that you can eat it as well.
There are over 10,000 plants species in Ecuador.
Flowers give me quick sugary hit,
but I am also on a look up for something more substantial.
These are little immature fern fronds
and these are actually edible,
and indigenous people around here will harvest these
and then eat them, but you need to boil them twice
before you do eat them.
But you can recognise them just from this monkey tail
shape that they have
and also the way they are covered in this
kind of horrible gloopy slime.
However they develop this just to protect themselves
from being eaten from, from bugs.
But I am going to cut the top half of these off
and then boil them
and eat them later.
Boiling them twice removes the toxic slime
which can cause severe stomach cramps.
God.
But it's time to find shelter.
I could build one,
but there's plenty of natural shelter around here.
There is a cave over there, just in the black
and I am beginning to see a few of these now,
and that will be a perfect place, somewhere like that,
to spend the night.
But first I have to get to the cave
and this water is too fast flowing and deep to wade through.
There is still no easy place to cross this stream,
but I've just passed some bamboo back there,
and that has made me think
of how we used to cross a lot of crevasses on Everest
and it has given me an idea.
Yeah, this is what I saw,
this clump here.
And there are literally over 100 species of bamboo
and what I'm hoping is that this stuff
sounds thin-walled enough
to let me get through with just this little knife.
Let's see if this works.
Yeah, this is,
this is cutting through all right.
Excellent.
Two long pieces of bamboo and some cross struts
attached with vine should be strong enough to hold at least 200 pounds.
Then I'll be able to cross over to the cave.
What I am looking for are some vines, just to
lash these cross braces together.
But the stuff I need is not,
is not this, this is all dead
and will break. I am looking for the living stuff.
Like this, here you go.
This is,
this stuff I think is what they call a linglang vine
and it is good, it is bendy, it is supple and it is living,
so.
Find a few more of these.
I am going to use split saplings as cross struts.
I have got the first cross brace.
Here,
and then all I need to do
is use...
Some of this nice flexible vine to tie it with.
Nature provides all the resources that you need.
The great thing about these vines is that just one
or two hitches
and because it is quite living and it is damp,
they actually tighten on themselves,
and they are really secure.
The bamboo may be hollow,
but a structure this big could be heavy.
This probably weighs a 150 pounds,
so build it near to where you need it.
Once in place,
I should be able to walk over the water to my cave.
This ladder is almost,
almost in place now
and, even though all the materials are actually quite light,
the ladder itself now is pretty heavy.
But...
It just shows what a little bit of lateral thinking can do.
Here we go.
Oh, no.
It's just completely smashed.
That is a disaster.
I am in the cloud forests of Ecuador,
trying to cross a glacial river.
I have made a bamboo ladder bridge, but disaster struck.
Well that is the reality of survival,
it doesn't always work
and I am back to the drawing board.
But I have run out of time and it will soon be dark.
It's getting pretty late in the day now
and I haven't really got time for shelter and a fire
and I've got to prioritise.
But the important thing for me is really to get a fire.
I need to get dry and I need to get warm,
and the good thing about this forest,
because it is quite dense above,
there is quite a lot of natural shelter anyway if it does rain.
But I have got to go and try and find a bit of tinder
to get that fire going.
Finding dry tinder in these wet conditions might look impossible,
but it is not if you know where to look.
If you look around here you see all these rabbit dropping.
Yeah, look, more here,
and these are rabbit trails and what they do,
they create these burrows under all of this grass,
look you can see here.
And then inside it...
You get this dry grass.
It's like the rabbits have, you know done my job for me.
So I need a few more of these.
I have to be quick.
The rains which fall every evening are just beginning.
Everything just here is so wet.
(SIGHS)
It is just making getting this fire going...
Really difficult.
The problem is all of this grass that I've collected earlier
is all now just soaking wet.
My kindling is wet, my wood is wet
and I am cold at the moment.
Oh, dear.
It's like every time I get a spark
this blooming rain
just puts it out.
Do you know I don't think I have ever
before...
Actually, failed to get a fire going.
Come on.
Do you know what?
This is a losing battle.
The best thing I can do actually with this grass now
is just...
Stuff it down my shirt
and use this as insulation,
and hope that it keeps me warm
through this night.
And what this does is it acts like kind of down,
and will insulate hopefully a lot of the heat.
And it makes me look like I have eaten too many cheesecakes,
but it should work.
I tell you what,
I'd murder a cheesecake as well at the moment.
And it's...
kind of weird sometimes being in these forests
when it's dark,
but my mission now is really just to try and get
as warm as I can with this grass stuff,
and...
Keep my chin up
and see this night through.
It rained for most of the night.
But when things seem really bad,
it's often the little things that can give you hope.
Look, you see up there, see that little purple flower,
just on its own?
So beautiful.
And there is no doubt that
moving though this sort of terrain is hard work
and it is often the little things that give you a pick-me-up.
But for me it is suddenly coming across that sort of a flower.
And I always kind of think of it, it is like,
you know it's like God's extravagance.
You know it is there, nobody might ever see it,
it is like nature can't help but create beautiful things.
I just love that.
I am still following my river down,
in the hope it will lead me to a tributary of the Amazon.
After being soaked for 24 hours,
my strength is being sapped.
I need food
and I need to get dry.
But before long my path along the riverbank
comes to an abrupt end.
I have got two options. I can either...
Try and wade it.
Thing is I am just going to end up soaking wet
and this water is cold
and that is the last thing I really want.
The other option
is just to jump
and go for this tree.
You know, and the worse thing that can happen
is that I will end up in the drink,
wet anyway.
But at least this way there is a chance I can stay dry.
I can't afford to get this jump wrong.
Grab the branch with both hands
and then use your momentum to swing your legs up.
But watch out for loose moss.
I'm right on the edge of the rainforest.
From now on, my journey is gonna get a lot tougher.
I am out of the cloud forest of Ecuador
and I am entering the dark jungles of the mighty Amazon.
The rainforest here has over nine feet of rainfall every year,
and it's home to over a million species of plants
and animals.
I'm definitely now down in the rainforest,
and I can tell this just because of the height of the tree canopies
above me. Some of these are probably about,
probably 80 foot high
and also it is much, much more humid down here,
really noticeably so.
But I am down also in a pretty permanent looking creek,
and it's this that I hope
will lead me to eventually a river, the Amazon
and eventually civilisation.
In the wet season, this would be a raging torrent,
but at the moment, I can use it to lead me down.
So you see here where two streams meet in like a junction,
but the important thing is,
just keep following the flow of the water down hill.
This part of the Amazon has a huge variety of wildlife,
over eight percent of the world's animal species are here.
Oh, look at these guys.
Oh, these are palm weevil grubs.
Wow, I tell you what, these,
these are the biggest grubs I have ever seen, look.
And this is just the sort of place that they like,
they feed off all this rotting, soft interior of the palm tree.
But these are absolutely massive.
And actually the locals eat a lot of these,
they are like a delicacy.
They are full of good protein
and...
you can actually eat them whole.
Look at it wriggling around.
Holy smoke.
That is
just.
The Huaorani tribe of the Amazon consider these a real delicacy.
Horrible.
And do you know what,
they can keep their delicacies.
I just gotta get one more down.
They are a mouthful of goo,
with a texture of cream cheese,
with crunchy lumps of grittle.
But that goo is also good protein.
But the Amazon rainforest
is also full of life that is easy on the palate.
It is just beginning to drizzle again
and that is a good time for a bit of fishing as well.
The rain will distract the fish
and make it easier to get in close.
First though, I need some sort of weapon.
As I've been walking along I've been looking
for some sort of wood that would be suitable for making a bow,
and this is old chonta palm here that has fallen down,
and this stuff is ideal because it is very hard
but also it allows you to splinter it length ways.
The bow I am whittling is designed for fishing
and the local Huaorani tribe
have developed this over centuries of use.
It's especially good
for spearing fast moving fish in shallow pools.
This chonta palm wood has just been perfect.
It has taken me about 15 minutes
and already I have whittled that down
into something about the right length.
A Huaorani hunter will take days to make one of these,
but they expect theirs to last for years.
Hopefully I will not need it that long.
I just now need to cut a couple of notches
in each end that I am going to attach the drawstring to.
(HAMMERING)
The pitta palm grows throughout the jungle.
The leaves contain long fibres that make perfect bow strings.
This pitta has these nasty little barbs all the way down it,
so the first thing I need to do is just take those off.
Once I have got it like this,
I need to just
open this out.
And then I just want to separate
the fleshy bit
from the actual
strong back of these leaves.
And now I just take the strands of it, put it in my mouth
and then start to weave it.
Weaving the strands together increases their strength
and durability.
Once on the bow,
it will need to cope with huge pressure.
And now to attach it, what I've done down this end,
I have put a simple bowline loop on to it there.
And then on this side I do the same.
To tie this bowline,
all I do
is make a little loop like this
and I put this end
through the thing, and a good way to remember it is
the rabbit comes out of the hole,
round the tree,
and then
back down
the hole.
And then all I have got to do
is now bend this
and hope like hell
that it doesn't break.
And that then...
Is ready.
The arrows are made of the same heavy wood as the bow,
perfect for cutting through the water.
But I didn't realise the stream would be home
to aggressive piranhas.
This is going to make hunting and fishing even harder.
I am in the Ecuadorian Rainforest,
hunting for fish.
This vegetation is just the sort of place
that fish like to hide,
especially at this time of day now.
Piranha live in these sort of streams and they can be vicious,
stripping animals that fall into the water in seconds.
But that only happens
when there are in large shoals of 100 or more.
This pond is just too small to support that many,
so it should be safe to be in.
Piranhas are tasty
but they are also difficult to catch.
I tell you what,
they are quick, these fish.
Recently a woman was stranded in the rainforest
and survived alone for two weeks
by catching piranhas in a shallow river.
She used only insects for bait.
I need to find us some shallower pools
where I can really see what's on the bottom.
What's happened here is you've got this jungle pool
where the water level actually is dropping
and you can see on the bank, the level that the water was,
and it has just left all the debris there.
But this means that fish gets trapped in just these sort of pools,
and it is shallow
and this is going to be my best chance
of actually catching something.
I will just get the camera
and put it into the water
and you should be able to see them swimming around.
And there are quite a few in here,
and I reckon if I just spend a few minutes
and am patient,
I will get something.
There is another one, here we go.
Brilliant, look at that.
And imagine 1,000 of those,
you can see why it would just strip the flesh off a human in seconds.
Razor sharp teeth and this guy is pretty well dead
and he still have the power to go straight through this.
Hunting in this shallow pool may look easy,
but catching piranha this way takes patience.
But in under an hour, I've got enough for decent meal.
I am going to build a fire,
as it is essential piranha are cooked thoroughly,
because they carry harmful parasites.
I have got a little cooking rack here
and on it I have got my fern fronds
bubbling away,
and I have boiled these a couple of times
and just changed the water,
just to make sure they are really well cooked.
And I have got some of the other fern fronds cooking
in these bamboo sections here.
And then wrapped in these leaves
I have got my piranha that I've caught,
and these should be, should be ready now.
And look there you go,
those are those nasty teeth grinning away at me.
But that,
that smells great, so I am going to put that
onto this leaf here,
and it is so nice just actually having a bit of time now
to cook this properly
and get something really decent to eat.
Fish, the fronds
and then really enjoy it properly.
And this is now all looking like quite a substantial meal.
And they taste like really gooey, gunky asparagus.
Do you know what? These would be so nice with a bit of mayo.
Let's try it with a bit of piranha instead.
For such an aggressive,
unpleasant fish,
it doesn't half taste good.
With a full tummy,
all I need now is a good night's sleep.
There have been a few of these caves along the river
and this one doesn't look,
look too bad, it might be big enough for me to spend the night in here.
Always check the cave is empty
by throwing in rocks or sticks first.
Snakes and wild pigs also like caves.
The darkness just came in about ten minutes,
it just happens so quickly in the jungle,
and all I have got to do now is clear it out
and then try and get a fire going.
I've made just a little pyramid fire out of some bamboo
and some grass here
and hopefully this should go.
At last I've got a fire,
so at least it means tonight I am going to be warm.
It has been really hard to sleep.
It is one of those nights you know when you are really tired but...
you cannot sleep, my reason being though
just all
the things I keep hearing. I think that this
cave is home to a lot of other creepy crawlies.
But I have to rest,
for tomorrow I will need all my strength to deal
with the rapids of the mighty Amazon River.
It's dawn in the Amazonian jungle,
and I've seen loads of burrows near the cave.
I am going to see if I can catch something special for breakfast.
And once again,
the local Huaorani tribe have an ingenious technique.
I've been looking for one of these for a while
and I think this is a comacchio plant.
I can tell this just from,
if you look at the white spots on the top of the leaves,
also this thick stalk
and then these little aerial white little shoots coming out.
And what local hunters will do is cut this,
and then it produces this like stink like a skunk,
and then they will stick it down a hole,
maybe like an armadillo hole,
and that stench will then flush the animal out.
So this is what I am going to try and do,
but I don't want to get any of this on me,
and soon as I cut that,
I will be able to smell it, yeah. Oh, it is like pungent like,
yeah it is like sort of ammonia or skunk.
But that should, that should do the trick, let's see.
This could help me catch a rodent or perhaps,
if I am lucky, an armadillo.
This is just the sort of place that might be quite good for this.
Yeah, there is quite a musky smell around,
so it probably means there is a rodent or something
in these burrows.
Burrows often have two exits,
so the stench coming from one will force it out the other.
There it is. There it is.
What a time for the bow to break.
And that must have been about two kilos of agouti
that came scurrying out of there.
I tried to get him but he is off.
I have picked up a few cuts during the chase,
but in the rainforest there is a tree that can help me.
Yeah, look those are the heart shaped,
heart shaped leaves I was looking for,
and also this smooth trunk,
and this tells me this tree is a sangra dae drago,
which literally means dragon's blood.
And the reason it is called that is because the sap inside it is red,
and before I came out here,
I was told to look out for this tree if I ever cut myself just
because the properties of the sap are very good antiseptic
and healing, and if you watch this, as soon as I tack in,
you will see the blood sap start to ooze out.
And then any little like nicks I've got
I can put it on
and look, if you watch this as well, as soon as you get it on,
if you like lather it up
it goes into this white paste.
Like kind of soap.
And that is very healing, good antiseptic
and will help the blood to coagulate.
Great tree.
It is time to head back to the river,
as that's my best hope of getting out of here.
Well that looks like the big river I was hoping for.
It's now deep enough to swim,
and being in the river will allow me to cover many miles much quicker.
The technique in rapids is to keep your legs
and feet in front of you.
This will help you fend off any rocks.
But the rapids soon start to get bigger,
and eventually it becomes just too dangerous.
Well I've reached this big river
and that has been a primary goal from the start of this journey,
to reach a big river, but it is bigger than I thought
and it has also got some sensible size rapids on it,
which means it is too risky really for me to go down just on my own.
I am going to need to find something that is going to help me.
I need to make some sort of boat.
These rivers are the highways of the Amazon,
and if I can get onto it, it will take me to a settlement.
I am making less than a mile an hour along this river bank,
but I have seen a cluster of trees that will be my ticket out of here.
The balsa tree,
and you can tell these by their grey mottled bark
and distinctive fan shaped leaves.
It's very soft and very buoyant.
Awesome, that is that down and then
cut myself a length of it,
about,
about here.
Ten years ago,
a group of hikers were lost in the jungle.
They survived by building a simple raft out of balsa,
lashed together with vines, and they simply floated down stream.
After three days, they reached a settlement.
This river is heading east,
and I know that's where I will have the greatest chance
of finding a settlement.
It's pretty smooth this bit,
but I can hear there are more rapids ahead,
and the worst bit of it is you can hear them before you can see them.
And you don't really see what is ahead until you are kind of
right into it.
But this balsa wood is giving me so much buoyancy,
and it means really I can just cling to it,
keep my feet downstream
and say my prayers.
The river flows at up to 10 miles an hour,
and if I can just hang on,
this is my best chance at getting out of here.
I landed right on that rock.
The water level is now dropping lower and lower
and the sharp bed rock beneath me can break bones.
It's time to get out of the river.
I will set that free now.
It is actually quite nice to be back on terra firma.
On this journey,
it has felt like every step is a struggle
against the forces of nature,
but what matters in survival is just never giving up,
even when plans fail.
And every day you survive, you are one day closer to home.
I'm just going to turn the camera around and look,
I don't know if you can see that, there is a fire
and what looks like a dug out canoe over there.
And I always knew that if I just kept heading downhill,
until I found a stream
and then followed the stream to a river,
that one of these big Amazon Rivers
would eventually lead me to civilisation, and that fire
and that canoe for me means the end of my journey.
Subtitle Caption by ZestCorp