In 1987, I had this idea that a great way to teach wilderness survival would be to head out into the woods and do exactly that.

Survive.

Now I need the skills because I'd be filming myself alone.

And you, the viewer, would be made aware of that.

And I thought, what a great way to make these skills more relatable to you.

Problem was, the technology was not available for me to film myself beyond the old grainy camcorders as we used to call them.

Well, fast forward to the year 2000, 13 years and indeed the technology became available.

the take home information.

And the skills that you would learn from this series would make you more confident in nature.

You'd stay warm, dry and safe, and therefore you'd be able to reconnect to the natural world.

What you're about to watch is raw and real, and not to be confused with reality television.

These are my journeys into the world of survival and around the planet.

These are the skills that can keep you alive and open the doors to nature.

The only reality that matters.

(dramatic music) (dramatic music) (native american war cry) I had never been to the tropics.

Say, for spring break in Fort Lauderdale.

Costa Rica, nicknamed the Little Amazon, gave me butterflies of anticipation for what I could learn in a place where sleeping randomly on the ground was not an option.

A place where the biggest body of water was salty and undrinkable.

It would be my introduction into the delicacy of freshly gathered coconuts.

I had a lot to learn about jungles and this This is my freshman class.

Just slice my finger open.

And it wasn't even worth it.

Is this veins too thin to drip for me?

- 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.

285 species of birds, 139 mammals, 116 reptiles and amphibians, and more than 6,000 species of insects.

(waves crashing) It was minus 40 degrees Celsius, with four feet of snow, when I left my Ontario home, and boarded a plane to Central America, and it was plus 40 degrees Celsius when I landed.

(waves crashing) There are still many miles of uninhabited coastline, and many thousand hectares of deep impenetrable jungle.

My camera crew leave me behind with just my gear.

And I'm alone for seven days of survival.

That smoke?

That's good.

The whole school of.

Fish right below me here.

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 more harm.

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 bow materials, and I can maybe cut this down to size a bit to reduce the weight, because you know it's heavy, it's heavy wood, but I can also make kind of a fire bundle.

If I take a coconut, one of these hollow coconuts, lots of 'em 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, ow, 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 resort to the fire bow 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.

(leaves rustling) Ow.

I'm just pouring with sweat, but in a way that's a good thing, if you stop sweating, you're dangerously close to, oh, you're basically in the stages of dehydration.

So at least for the moment, I'm still sweating profusely as it were.

The temperature in the jungle can go well over a 100 degrees, and the humidity is stifling.

Well this vine looks familiar.

It's just like the grapevine from back home.

You know, all habitats have their plants that store water, and the Costa Rican jungle is no exception.

This is called water vine.

(monkey hooting) Oh, you have monkeys right above me here.

Oh damn, just sliced my finger open, and it wasn't even worth it, 'cause this vine's too thin to drip for me.

Okay that was just plain stupid.

Looking up to a couple of silly monkeys throwing things at me, (fabric taring) and I end up, I hit the bone with the knife.

I could feel c-conk, like that, just that feeling of going in deep.

It stopped bleeding, I just kept it pressed for a while, my mouth just kept it held tight.

But, man that hurt.

That was stupid, and there was not even any payoff, there was no water in the vine for goodness sakes.

So I'm gonna just make a bandage out of (fabric taring) my Scooby-Doo underwear.

(fabric taring) 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.

(monkey hooting) 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-frame and crawl in underneath, 80 to 90 degrees every night.

I don't need to stay warm.

I don't even need to stay dry.

Fat 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.

So this is the best I can do to get up off the ground is this big fallen over tree.

There's my fire.

I'd packed it, I thought it was gonna keep smoldering.

Kinda had it.

Argh.

Anyway, it's gone out.

I do not have the energy or the will 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.

You drop something in front of it, they'll all band together and they'll move it out of the way, a leave, or a stick, or something, so they can have their trail back.

Quite spectacular.

(crickets chirping) Got two more of these.

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

And soon.

(crickets chirping) You know at night the forest just comes alive, the whole ground begins to move.

Crabs and spiders, and snakes.

Everything comes alive.

Argh, damn it.

This is horrible.

I'm gonna do the fire bow tomorrow night for sure.

Everything moves, everything's crawling.

I think there's a army ants on the tree, 'cause I'm starting to get bitten all over, and it wasn't mosquitoes, I can tell you that much.

And scorpions, tarantulas this big.

This is all I can do.

Sitting away, kinda like a sitting duck.

(suspenseful music) Picture this, you're in a business suit done uptight, 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.

Just breathing makes you sweat.

I hardly slept at all last night.

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 hand, just never ending, never ending.

It's land crabs even.

You can feel the forest floor, hear the forest floor moving.

Wow.

I sure as heck don't wanna have another night in the jungle.

Huh?

The monkeys are throwing stuff at me again.

The monkeys are throwing stuff at me again.

Argh.

Oh, oh.

God damn it.

Geez.

Worst part of that, was my finger.

Ah.

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

Aye, aye, aye.

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 fer-de-lance fung bushmaster, lunges out at you.

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

Yeah, sure.

Come to Costa Rica for a survival thing.

Do seven day survival in Costa Rica, that would be a good place.

Have a word with my producers when I get home.

Let me tell you.

Now it's day five, and I'm still trying to find my way out, and 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 was a lot easier to say the least.

I had all those coconuts to eat, and here I just don't feel like eating at all.

(gentle pensive music) 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, whack, whack, and I was able to get myself a meal for tonight.

Got myself, Got myself, huh, a little lizard to eat tonight.

a little lizard to eat tonight.

Mm mm.

(fire crackling) I hate the thought of killing 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 whiptail, will at least gimme a little bit of food energy.

Hmm.

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.

Man I'm getting hungry.

I miss my coconuts.

(fire crackling) 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, in 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.

Now 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, 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, 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... Coming down, I can hear both the ocean, and I can hear a river flowing.

And you know what?

The river's gotta lead to the ocean.

I'm gonna follow it, and hope that it takes me the heck outta here.

Oh.

Yeah.

And it's cold too.

Ah, cool.

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

Argh.

Yeah, but that's good.

The blastocystis and the amoeba's, 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.

(water trickling) 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, 'cause I am way overheated.

I'm too dangerously close to heat stroke.

Whoo!

Ahhh, and the water is wonderfully cold.

Ahhh.

God that's good.

(water splashing) Oh yeah.

(water splashing) Ahhh.

Ahhh, that's much better.

It brings life right back into ya.

As long as something doesn't bite ya.

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.

(water sloshing) Down the river.

The paradise found.

I'm back at the ocean.

Two nights, and 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 along the coast, but I'm not going back in jungle.

Lesson learned there, don't try to find your way out by going through the jungle.

This was 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.

'Cause 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 tides change.

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

Or you could be swimming before morning.

(harmonica music) (gentle drum music) 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.

Ah yeah.

(chuckles) In fact, it's one big beautiful beach, (chuckles) and there's a couple of boats.

Wooh!

Ahhh.

Couldn't be better timing.

Pura Vida baby!

Pura Vida!

(electronic outro music) Directly inspired by his own survival expeditions, journeys and challenges.

World renowned survival instructor Les Stroud brings you survival, essential skills and tactics to get you out of anywhere alive.

Available for 19.99.

In addition, the book will to live Dispatches from the Edge of Survival is available, featuring Les Stroud's own top ten survival stories of all time.

Just 21.99.

To order, please go to lesstroud.ca, and click on shop or go to the Les Stroud YouTube channel.

Survivorman Les Stroud.