Jungle Survival Videos

A quick list of the videos I am watching, taking notes on, as I prepare to cross the Darien Gap on foot. I am making the best of my time now in Panama City, waiting for official permission to cross from the Servicio Nacional de Fronteras.

The first are a series of short clips from Ray Mear’s Extreme Survival show on the BBC. Honestly, the show is more for entertainment purposes and for those sitting at home on the couch than true instruction, but they are fun to look at and will give you an idea of the type of forest that I will be encountering, minus FARC guerillas, AUC paramillitaries, and the flora and fauna specific to the Darien, including Jaguars and over 30 million species of insects in Los Katios National Park, Colombia.

I have learned much of what he covers here with my friend Beatrice from Venezuela, but like what he adds for fishing for crawdads, eating palm hearts, and how to start a fire from the cotton-like seed pods and strips of rubber tire.  Using rubber is obviously not my first choice, but it does burn long and well, even wet, a highly prized commodity.  A look at the leaves that he is walking on clearly shows that he is there during the dry season in the Osa peninsula. The bamboo, the leafs, much of what his is using there is dry. It isn’t even that dry in Panama City, yet alone the Darien rainforest.

One of the most important things, he says, when in the jungle, is not to panic. This project is about learning to live and acting out of trust  in God and not fear. The Darien is my catechism. Enjoy the videos! C