Survivorman & Son | Episode 3 | Ecuador | Les Stroud

come on [Applause] oh dammit [Music] [Music] survival is not a game for extreme adventurers in fact having to survive here in the deep amazon jungle nowadays is more likely for the average person like a father and son who simply embark on a journey to take some pictures of the jungle here amongst the jaguar and the deadly fertilized snake tourism of all kinds ensures that for years to come the average person will find themselves in places like the amazon jungle having to survive the wilderness survival has become a theater of entertainment the reality is much much different real people suffer horrific survival ordeals and not in the name of fun father and son head deep into the ecuadorian jungle in a simple photography expedition and their guide fails to return to pick them up that's a real survival situation how logan and i will fare in this scenario is entirely up to our luck our skill set or lack of our supplies or lack of our fitness level and our wills every year hundreds of people end up in a survival situation but what's the next best move once you know you're in it logan and i were in it within minutes of being dropped off on this remote stretch of jungle river in ecuador rain that will come to dominate our every move comes quickly we didn't come here for survival we came here for a photography shoot at least that's how we set ourselves up imitating real life we brought in what any father and son team might we each had one of those little wristband survival kits a tarp for rain while logan took his pictures and in a last-minute suggestion i threw in a small jungle hammock for us each all right so you want to shoot it out wide use some rocks here i'll work with you if you plan on being out for only a few hours but your pickup never arrives what happens next [Applause] this is the exact scenario where the apprehension really kicks in and i'm out here with logan and uh ostensibly on a photography expedition where's our pickup where's our where's our ride home so in this scenario it's obvious that we wouldn't be building shelters i mean who wants to go up into there right up into the jungle i mean you can see how thick it is up in there and so we're out on this sort of pebble beach here seemingly a nice open safe place to be but in fact what we've got to worry about the most logan is the water coming up and i think having our tarp right here looking this way is the best place because we can kind of watch it if we were on the other side down at the bottom end of this pebble beach and the water's coming up we might not notice it worst case scenario we can go up into that jungle there i can see it goes up and it'll be a scramble and it won't be pretty but at least we'll get away from the rushing water the rivers here can come up in less than an hour feet feet feet in an hour or three you could have a 10 foot rise in this river it's been raining off and on on us which is why we've got the tarp blade out here further up there in the hills if there's a lot of rain it's going to come down this river right onto logan and i i don't know if we're going to try to sleep in spells it's going to be hard to sleep anyway the other thing that logan and i aren't going to do is get a fire going and the reason for that is i want to follow in those footsteps of what most people would do and they wouldn't think to get a fire going and by the time you think oh my oh my gosh we we need a fire the sun sets and indeed the sun is about to set so here we go this is how it really happens you're never prepared for actual survival you're never prepared for your own guide not to show up you're prepared only for the few hours you expect to enjoy an adventurous trek but since my dad seemed pretty concerned about the water rising i figured why not mark its height now so we can notice if it's rising at all survival will take both of us thinking things through not just my dad so logan's got this idea of piling up some rocks right at the water's edge so that if this water level starts to rise we'll make sure that the rocks are distinctive and then can check the level and hopefully notice that it's staying put or even receding would be better with no food in our stomachs this begins the energy level countdown as we burn calories constantly through stress and activity without replacing them with food i like being out in the open i like that we're out here in terms of the bugs creepy crawly snakes jaguar all of that but i don't like being by this kind of river in the jungle because water can rise within minutes really in a half an hour you can be up a couple of feet washing all of this away and that's with it now this is just that time of day you're constantly saying it's got to be coming it should be coming any moment now and you start you start watching whether it be a road or in this case a larger river you just keep watching watching watching it's gotta show up sooner or later and it can lead to a lot of just apprehension and nervousness and you just [Applause] well it's easy to panic it's easy to freak out come down here to the sand and maybe see some jaguar tracks and sort of adds to the panic but i don't see any just yet logan's actually gone off into the jungle to see what's going on up there he was in the mood he said i want to climb up into there and see what's going on logan's youthful energy for exploring the immediate area is a huge payoff for me not being alone out here without even realizing it he's accomplishing a zone of assessment check what do we have further into the jungle it's his natural survival instinct kicking in okay dad so i'm going to go check those rocks and see if the water's advanced at all how do you know the water's up so i was just saying when um when we put the rock down yeah the water was like in front of it and now it's two feet past oh you're right uh oh this isn't good i mean i know it's getting dark do you think we should just go to that little spot you found or is it gnarly up there it's a little bit of a buggy sleep what i hate about a situation like this is logan may or may not realize just how dangerous this is and it's my son so i'm a lot more nervous than i normally would be there are a few elements of the wilderness i will not underestimate heavy winds and powerful water are two of them and as exposed as we are out on the gravel barn i want to see the spot in the jungle that logan found in his recon mission maybe it can serve as plan b if we have to move oh yeah i see even here could get washed out if you look at it i mean it is five six feet above the river yeah it's about five six feet up but you can see how it's been it's been deep enough here to come up here and wash out see all the mud and sand depending on how bad it gets [Music] all of this makes me nervous right now feeling like we might have to do something in the middle of the night is i hate that feeling it's not good [Applause] and almost handle anything during the day but when stuff happens at night very dangerous especially in the amazon jungle with the water rising fast we've made a quick decision to move camp in the dark in survival those who hesitate are lost and probably dead all right this is going to be nasty but well we'll be all right getting across now better now than when it's a fit deeper i suggest just walk slowly right behind me and i won't take you anywhere deep okay logan's boots are four inches shorter than mine and even that little disadvantage can matter in survival let me know if you need me to slow down deep here but not so bad you should be fine it's coming up though isn't it yeah i think so it's more just the water that's splashing up with the resistance yeah i can feel it already yeah but the water feels stronger than it did before okay down this way down this way shallower all right you know what before it starts raining let's get the hammocks off i've always said there's no forgiveness time for survival when it's terribly cold in the jungle it's the rain either prepare for it or get caught in it we didn't even have time to properly set up our little nylon tube hammocks to escape the torrential downpours that will last all night long it's raining so hard right now that my tarp actually felt came flying down and i got just poured on now i've got to kind of sit up and hold put myself together under this tiny little tarp that's pouring out though this is not good it can rain in the jungle as a torrential downpour for 20 straight hours trust me on this matter we would be spared that however as it only lasted 13 hours for us but now we're trapped against the jungle canopy river's in uh well it's not in full flood but it's it's a quite a bit in the waters that water was back down i would say it's come up uh i'm gonna give it two feet oh good that was brutal so where we were is up there is under water now so moving is the only thing that made sense last night it was a little gnarly but after a much better night that would have been we would have been washed out and this is where like i say sometimes the survival kit makes all the difference in the world but more importantly it's what you put in that survival kit and whether or not it's something that pertains to where you're going season activity all of that so that last made a decision to throw in a couple of uh small hammocks for the sake of a pound of weight this one little survival kit item is a lifesaver eliminating the need for gnarly jungle shelters crawling with ants possessing a painful bite and sting but we're not safe yet we need to cut deeper into the jungle and get ourselves a few more feet higher up in case the river keeps rising the last time i was in the amazon jungle the river i was beside rose 15 feet in a matter of hours but this activity of cutting trees is how we open ourselves up to injuries ow oh shoot stinging nettle that's going to burn so here's the uh the culprit and so i was just asking which it was so we can look out for it too and uh yeah i got a good burn happening on the hand and wrist right now two can work so much more effectively than one so we both work together to move camp quickly before the waters rise anymore there's no room for ego or laziness in group survival logan once again has the energy of youth on his side he convinces me to start cutting a trail into the jungle to see if we can get to a better part of the river we've cut a little bit of a trail here already working our way through by the way i lost this machete for a little while so i've tied got some rope there that's brightly colored and i've tied it on got a saying in survival if your knife's not in your sheath it's in your hand if it's not in your hand it's in your sheath we're gonna have to look up a lot here potential for snakes to fall down or even just spiders is much no matter how hot and humid it is we have to wear enough boating to protect ourselves from the spiders and the ants look straight through you're on the right track now this area of the jungle is known for the massive yet non-poisonous boa constrictor snake that's what i don't want to happen let's make some uh blazes on the trees here let's do a couple of these kinds of things kick your feet in the mud as well to mark a trail that way is it through here yeah okay you're right that's somebody's uh that's somebody's shelter look at the cut marks if not for logan walking down yesterday we wouldn't have found that dry patch that saved us last night and enough for logan pushing the issue saying let's go and do this bushwhack to see if we can get across the water we wouldn't have found this which i think might even be an old old trail i'm seeing the odd cut mark wow look how much it opens up here that's good problem is knowing where that is but this is a lot more got me tempted for tomorrow what do you think maybe one more loop and then hard left sure or through here it's up to you six to one half a dozen of the other it's a guess no matter what [Applause] well here we are at the other river the water's up but that doesn't mean it's up too much for fishing do some hand fishing under all of these rocks so the idea here is there's a small silver fish that hides out under the rocks in this river here and we're losing energy so we could do about do with about a dozen of them we know about these fish because of some simple pre-trip researching research is a vital component to surviving any ordeal sometimes knowing only one thing one plant you can eat one fish you can catch one way you can make a shelter or travel might be the one thing that keeps you alive [Music] jungle takes it out of here ah it's time to pull it in tonight it's in the heat in the rain and a little bit of work and zero food you start slowing down try and pick it up tomorrow hopefully catch some fish i'll work on the fire they'll work on catching fish two things we both like to do this too is part of surviving as a team specializing in the things you're good at the right person for the right job is the best practice for survival logan's crawled into jungle hammock and the water was going down down down looking so promising and then in the last 15 minutes it's come back up another foot again so it's anybody's guess as to what it's going to be like when we wake up in the morning that got through another day see what happens tomorrow we're into our third day of amazon jungle survival and my son logan and i are frustrated by how much the rising river has trapped us into one little spot in the jungle entrapment by these natural elements limits our survival possibilities all right so this is good news in spite of the rain the water's not only come down it's come way down i'm pretty sure logan can walk across that we'll keep the trail open and we'll mark it just the same because it can come back up within the next two hours we could be right back up to the banks again but one of the main things that i want to do is get a fire going now and this means i can come down here and even though all of this firewood here even though it's been under the water on several occasions it's also high and dry up in the air every time it is dry or sunny unlike everything in the bush which is so green so this is actually the wood that i want to get because i believe i could split into the inside of it and i'll have some dry firewood it's not normal for me to have a whole roll of duct tape as part of my survival kit i always have some duct tape but not a whole rule got a whole roll this time because we were doing photography work and we can set up various mounts using the duct tape tying things to trees that sort of thing but uh i think it's going to come into use a couple of ideas that i can effect today to help us out both in catching fish trail marking and fire starting walk down this way it's another thought occurred to me in a situation like this is that another thing that would be happening would be anger you know you'd be out here and part of you would be hoping nothing was wrong way back at base camp but you'd also be very very angry if somebody just messed up and that's why you weren't picked up and so as a father you know to think about how much anger would be extra anger would be inside you because you've got your son with you and that would color your judgment on what you should be doing and that anger can also lead to panic what do you think water's way way down i think you can even get across there now but we've got the trail we'll mark the trail just the same so we've got it i want to blaze it a little better as long as it doesn't come up quickly in the next couple hours i'm going to be a little bit home free for going over there to get firewood i think that's what i'd like to concentrate on and you can concentrate on getting up there to fish we wore two survival bracelets that were old and soaked by the rain leaving them mostly useless like we need a dozen pieces like this and we'll hopefully turn this into a fish bucket but i had a roll of tape with my camera gear and we can use it for survival instead my dad had a great idea for making container to keep any fish i catch containers and ropes are constantly used in survival okay and the other one is going to go opposite okay see i'm saying now we got to meet at the bottom and make them all match up at the top all right now we're going to do do you want them oh sure let's do one more survival is best when you can mix up primitive technology with modern technology the basket style is thousands of years old the tape not so much it just has to work and we're going to go all the way around the whole thing and make it make a globe that was an ant on the camera this is the very kind of activity that not only conserves calories but also serves to calm us down keep our minds focused on what we can do to better survive and you never know the work might just pay off whether it's making small traps or bettering your shelter it helps if you stay proactive what do you think are you sorry here we go the woman's got himself a basket for fish but he'll still need fishing line think we might need to work together to get this thread apart we can look a lot faster oh that's working really well this again is a big advantage of having two people when you have to survive little tasks like this become much more doable through them a lot faster that's why culture develops you can't survive out here alone not long term in our little survival bracelets was destroyed by age except for two little fishing hooks and the cord itself which can become a desperately needed fishing so we've line taken one small thin thread and broke it apart into three three separate lines which now logan can use for fishing to get a longer reach [Music] all right this is my field of firewood i know it seems crazy because it's always under the water but it's also high and dry at times like this i'm hoping that it's brittle and dry inside kind of tell by the weight of things whether or not they're waterlogged super heavy no good nice and light might just work in the jungle the dampness permeates everything got another soaker okay so my dad asked me to make two spears just in case of jaguar personally i don't think it's that big of an issue but clearly he does so i'm going to try to make one out of a piece of wood here i can see like my dad's point in why he wants the spears made to protect against jaguar and puma but in reality if you're getting attacked by jaguar or puma spear is not going to do much more than spare you a couple seconds before it kills you i mean obviously it's a jaguar to puma it's not out to kill you you know it's the same with like sharks i mean people always scared of sharks and think oh you know they can smell your blood from miles and miles away and they're out to kill you and if you're in the water with the shark it's going to bite you it doesn't actually happen like that i mean as long as you're not being stupid you're being careful it's most likely not gonna do anything okay here is the finished spear notches on the top sharp peak long body perfect for uh fending off jaguar logan and i split our efforts at surviving in the amazon jungle he concentrates on trying for fish while i busy myself with the hope of getting a fire going something i've never failed at even under the toughest conditions and while i search for wood i find something that can help logan instead hey logan look what i found so if it were me i put my hand in it like this and you wrap it around and then when you go to throw it it spools off the end so this will work really well for you if you want to use this instead as logan's confidence grows he forgets to trust my survival experience and in spite of my convincing talk he decides to go his own way towards making a fishing rod i don't agree with him but i also don't want to create conflict where there isn't any yet okay so i'm just gonna tie it to the end of this one should be bendy enough to hold the fish without breaking i'm gonna tie it to the top also gonna give extra length in case the stick does snap i can still hold onto the rope there we go that's not going anywhere got my safety in place rope attached to the end headed off fishing what i want to do here is mark up our trail a little bit better so we don't get turned around we got a little turn around coming back through the jungle here not too difficult to understand why and so i want to mark a little better and i thought you know what other than blazing all the trees which we're doing i can do this too okay so plan is to go up to the river try to hand catch some fish and when i do bring the fish back to the fishing rod that i made and use it to try to catch a bigger fish all right so this is a good spot to tape right here because it looks like a trail going through here it's easy for us to kind of get off the mark i have to turn right it's a sharp right turn here so this is the kind of corner where you want to double mark it so you know oh two marks beside each other this is where we do our right turn or a turn even if you forget which way to turn there's going to be a turn to make and because i've got the tape i'll mark this one up with double tape and never do that anywhere else again unless it means you're making a hard turn you always have to make that distinction when a trail starts to meander into a different direction make sure your markings are distinct as well so my dad was talking about this river was the best one for fishing but i don't think he knows what he's talking about because it's way too shallow for any of the fish to get under the rocks huh this tree is covered in leaf cutter ants sorry guys i'm going to ruin your highway yep they've lost the pheromone trail got a little bit of a pile up on the highway here why is it i feel bad all of a sudden like i just disrupted an entire universe there they'll figure it out they don't look like they're figuring it out walk over the tape boys okay seriously i feel guilty there [Applause] okay so there's been absolutely no luck with uh getting fish under the rocks it's starting to rain now so i gotta get this camera covered so what i'm gonna do is try to find some tadpoles in one of the smaller pools by our old camp and use them uh oh oh no i think rain's coming hard yep rain's coming down guess that was only a matter of time i'm gonna head back to camp as fast i can here and i can go fast now because the tape is marking my way really well taking all the guesswork out of every corner every twist and turn here's my double tape i know i gotta go this way perfect looks like a charm once again the energy of youth spurs me on to be more proactive logan wants to keep fishing in the rain rather than hide out under the tarp with me so i figure i should get out here with him see how i can help [Music] oh yeah good idea that makes for an easier bait tadpoles and an obvious bait too okay so finally got this all raveled up so it's perfect ready to go i only have two hooks so hopefully i'll screw this up and it's pouring rain right now which socks might make better fishing though [Applause] this track fishing down here i actually don't agree with this little fishing location but who am i to say i mean i could say don't fish down here maybe this is where they all are at least he's out there trying it's tricky with teenage boys survival situation nothing's different than it is at home any parent of a teenage son knows they have no energy when you need them to have energy lots of energy when you don't want a bad energy well just having trouble finding a spot that's not going to get me snagged what about those uh bomber pools that we were looking at there's nothing in there how do you know i guess you can look at them but you won't get snagged at least right but you're not gonna catch anything well okay but i mean it should be worth a try today what are you gonna do i'm gonna walk up there too many sticks over here in my experience i can't believe this is going to work the water is too fast and muddy for a little bit of string a tiny hook and a tadpole so like you can see it's not so easy when you don't have real fishing gear everybody likes to go on about oh when i was a kid i grew up with a string and a stick and finishing off my grandmother's bridge and catching catfish come on out and try it in a survival situation makeshift lines and little tiny hooks and can't get to the really good spots just it's just not so easy it's rival fishing and real fishing are two different things and even in real fishing people get skunked all the time the difference with survival is your life depends upon it so getting skunked sucks we continue to have bad luck with catching any fish but the water is down finally so finding out what else is around the corner becomes paramount to affecting good survival all right while we have time we're gonna bust a move up the river for two reasons one to try some more hand fishing and two for me i just want to explore and see what's up river the thing about this type of fishing is we know about it because before we came in here we asked it's how we know that there are some edible plants back there that we can make use of tonight and to me any adventure should be started with some kind of knowledge already acquired so you know what you're getting yourself into knowing how to get these small fish out of these rocks it will be because we asked ahead of time and knowing those little things about an area that pertain to survival are vital even if you're just here on a photography expedition and you expect to go home that night because what you expect and what might happen could be two completely different things it doesn't really matter how hot it is in the jungle once you're soaked to the bone you chill down quickly here comes the rain still trying gotta hand it to him it comes to fishing he's persistent well those trees we can eat are at least a sure thing so i'm gonna go cut those down because i'm pretty light-headed here we are in terms of how many hours we've been with our food got to be around 67 and still putting out a lot of energy it shows you even with huge advantage of having a tarp a couple of jungle hammocks it's a great nighttime advantage but it doesn't put food in our stomachs let's get out of this rain and dry off chop down some of those trees get some food however meager into our bodies that's it isn't it yeah it tastes kind of like celery okay good i'll cut up some more and get it all fresh make us like a meal for tonight the amount of rain we've been receiving this is not gonna be easy water's coming up again figures get rid of all the wet bark first down to what i hope is dry wood it's not just the dampness in the wood it's the dampness in the air that matters too and even just trying to see if the inside wood is damp as possible because my hands are wet i don't have anything to dry or even my clothing is all damp the angle angle this down a little more like this the shavings tend to fall more onto the pile than flying all over the place if i do it like this they kind of fly all over to my angle down it's a little better you need to take a break can you do me a favor while you take a break can you give me a maybe like a just a um three golf ball sized little bundles of just bundled up duct tape like just a mess of duct tape [Applause] would have been nice to catch some fish [Applause] what i like to do is carve these down to these fine shavings but then always leave the last piece like a pencil stick because then then you've got the next layer of kindling can't tell if it's wet or dry it's starting to rain isn't it shoot [Music] the dampness permeates everything especially the matches that came inside the survival bracelets we got these five little matches this pathetic little striker and tape and i want to light the tape because it should hold the flame really well let's see if i can get things going from there oh boy nope not going to work it's just not going to work matches are too moist they're just falling apart yep they're like mush all right plan b the flint striker i gotta move quickly because it's getting dark on us i'm gonna shave off tiny shavings of this magnesium and i'll use these match heads just the same i'll mix them in because they may still ignite what i want to do is like a kind of little box to catch the shavings i don't know if that's going to work or not but i'll give it a try here the hardest part of this is always just getting these shavings and you need a big pile so this is gonna take a little while hang in there i've got a bad feeling about what i'm going to attempt even using my trusty flint striker i waited too long i should have checked all of this out while i had lots of daylight my hope is that i can get the tape to ignite when i hopefully ignite the magnesium shavings with a spark [Applause] come on baby magnesium is not catching there's just not enough of it some of it's already burned let's try up again i don't think it's gonna work now though the magnesium shavings have thinned out and i'm running out of steam it's been two hours just concentrating on this not including the splitting and gathering of firewood come on man man oh i would kill for some dry grass right about now logan i don't think we're getting this fire going no no not worth keep trying yeah oh man it's i mean just trying to gouge all of the magnesium off of this bar it's really exhausting i'm sweating doing this it's getting dark what i have to do is i have to sit down i've done this before but it takes me like i spend a good 45 minutes to an hour just getting the pile of shavings and keeping them out of the wind and yeah this ain't happening i can't let this beat me i've never let a fire beat me one way somehow i'll get it going rain or shine jungle or desert forest or arctic i pride myself on always being able to get a fire going these are i can't give up yes my little hand notes of all the stuff that we've been filming but even this paper is damp still might be able to rab it out of a hat here [Applause] [Music] even this is all too some damp my old tricks are letting me down while it drips on me right now all right we're out for photography expedition brought some toilet paper let's try this now [Applause] whoa got it come on oh no oh no the tape didn't catch it's that damp you gotta be kidding me we had flame dude no i saw it's raining again yeah yeah it's i can feel the rain on my back and go again logan i need your help rip off a piece of duct tape dangle it into flame get it burning get it burning whatever you do let's get it right in there it doesn't want to burn at all i know i know i know everything is so wet ah it's gone isn't it i think so [Applause] that's disappointing even survivor man can have a bad day when it comes to getting a fire going and here comes the rain [Music] i'm not one to give up and yet again i get a small flame and this time the tape is burning too all right come on oh damn it you got to be kidding me ah oh man all right as you saw a big gush of water just fell off of the tarp up above square on for the entire pile of kindling and what was once plain [Applause] no words [Music] it's been years of doing survival thousands of fires harsh weather difficult circumstances rain snow wind cold hot so this necessarily wipes always give yourself every advantage possible if adventure is your goal a survival ordeal doesn't happen by accident it occurs because you didn't prepare or you ignored the signs of danger or you shunned having some basic knowledge it's not the extreme athletes and high-risk adventurers who end up in survival situations it's families friends mothers and children fathers and sons [Music] if you want to continue on this journey with me go to oln.ca you

Channel: Survivorman - Les Stroud

Views: 516,943

Rating: 4.8926959 out of 5

Keywords: Survivorman TV Series, Les Stroud, Survivorman, Survivorman Les Stroud, Survivorman TV Show, Survivorman TV, Survivorman & Son, Ecuador, photography expedition, Ecuadorian jungle, jungle, survival, survive, dangerous rainforests, rainforest

Id: 3mfIZ0PyROE

Length: 48min 12sec (2892 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 29 2021