Original subtitles

It is definitely strange, uh, being alone.

Usually, at this point in the challenge,

you are building that camaraderie with your partner.

And there is none of that here because it's just me.

So, definitely a very different feeling,

not having anyone to talk to.

This is tough.

Yeah. I'm just so happy right now.

I missed Africa a lot.

What an adventure.

But I know there's going to be a lot of good and happy moments out here,

and happiness is a better when shared.

I don't have anybody to share my happiness with out here.

[sighs]

Being alone out here sucks.

That's all there is to it.

[narrator] They've tested themselves

in the most grueling environments on Earth...

We got fire!

[narrator] ...and proven the value of teamwork

in overcoming harrowing conditions.

[woman 1] Oh, my God. I'm so cold.

[narrator] Now, eight of the most battle tested survivalists

will take on their toughest challenge yet,

as they attempt 21 days with no partner...

[animal groaning]

[narrator] ...to each take on a separate location...

solo.

Yes! Bad ass bitch right now.

That's a honker!

- [Fernando] This is no joke. - [man] Ah!

[woman 2] This is the most naked and afraid I've ever felt.

[man 3] Oh!

Why am I out here?

[Terra] You either get it done or die.

[screams]

[Cheeny] Oh, man!

There's just so much meat on this fish.

It's unbelievable.

Unbelievable.

Catfish on a stick.

Catfish in a pot,

catfish on a rock.

Catfish, baby.

One fish, two fish, catfish.

Oh, there he is.

[narrator] On day three,

Cheeny, a wilderness survival instructor from Maine

found early success by catching a 15-pound catfish,

she calls Caruzilla.

Yes! [laughs]

I'm gonna preserve them pretty well by smoking them.

I'll just reboil it in my water and consume it that way.

'Cause, uh, even though it's...

cooked and it's good, I want to re-cook it,

just to make sure that...

if there's any bacteria or anything it's...

it's killed, so it doesn't make me sick.

Hope the fish will last me just a little bit longer.

Please...

It's good.

Nothing like catfish.

I guess this is it.

Here we go.

I'm Terra. I am from Mobile, Alabama,

and I am an archery tech.

I was in the Air Force for 12 years,

and during that time I went overseas 12 times.

I have done a week at a time alone by myself in the woods

with nothing but a knife.

So, yes. I am absolutely prepared for this.

All right, baby. Ready for round two. Let's go.

The last time I was on the challenge,

I was out as transgender.

What defines me is not how I look or how I act.

It's what I do in my life.

And things that I do in my life are [bleep] epic.

So, I got my blade.

I'm so glad I've gotten my knife this time.

I've got my paracord.

I got my pot.

And, I see they've given me a fire starter.

I see the fire starter,

and I'm choosing to leaving it behind

because I want this to be a primitive challenge.

I have practiced all kinds of different ways to make fires.

Really expect that

while I'm out here I'll be able to make a friction fire without an issue.

I came out here for a challenge, so I'm good.

I'm gonna leave that there.

In my previous challenge,

I think my biggest obstacle was losing my partner.

He was just trying to push himself

so we could have a better existence while we're out there.

Shaun...

He's not responding, so...

[Terra] I'm going into this one knowing

that the entire time I'm going to be completely alone.

Doing this solidifies that it wasn't a first-time fluke.

All right. It looks like I'm here.

So, for now, I think I need to get at least to this tree.

It's got a good water source right next to it,

and I gotta get there quick.

We're losing daylight fast.

I can definitely tell the elevation difference

because I'm breathing hard already.

[narrator] Terra has been dropped into the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico,

where the 6,300-foot elevation

rapidly increases the risk of dehydration and fatigue.

These steep mountains are home to the largest concentration of jaguar in Mexico,

and the highly venomous fer-de-lance snake,

whose bite can quickly dissolve skin, muscle tissue,

and lead to death, if not immediately treated.

[Terra] All right.

A little bit more steep here.

Damn!

I can definitely tell the elevation difference.

The higher your elevation, the harder it is to breathe

because of the less oxygen.

Like, right up there is a clearing,

which I'm hoping, means that that's the river.

I am literally racing the sun right now to get to where I'm going.

Uh, I need to get my shelter done, at least, bare minimum tonight,

I have to have a shelter done.

[narrator] With expert survival skills,

a military background,

and having successfully completed a 21-day challenge,

Terra starts with a Solo Survival Rating, or SSR, of 7.3.

[Terra] Sweating more than the last time I was in church.

I see my river.

It's not a bad little area.

It's very shaded.

It's very dense above me.

Good location to set up camp.

I'm definitely feeling the pressure right now.

I know that the sun's going down and I don't have a shelter.

I am making a debris shelter right here.

I'm gonna dig out just a little bit,

just enough to get my body underneath.

And then, I'm gonna sticks debris on top.

That way I'm at least protected overnight.

Yeah. I could sleep in that.

I'm running out of daylight

and I still need to figure out a way to get water.

I could probably dig a seep well right there.

A seep well works by going to the water table,

which is at that level down there, about a foot down.

And, as it comes through the ground,

uh, the dirt acts as a filter

to take out anything that's harmful in the water.

My arm is worn out.

[sighs]

Oh, [bleep].

My heart is beating out of my chest. [sighs]

I have to finish this.

Having a quick shelter that you can put together

is sometimes the only thing you can do

to keep yourself going in the game of survival.

It's not the most beautiful thing in the world

and it's not the most extravagant.

But it'll get me through the night.

I'm not going to try to create a fire tonight.

After digging the still, walking all this way, making the shelter,

I would just be killing myself to make a fire.

Got 20 more days of this.

[sighs]

[growling]

[Jamie] I'm going to use my machete here, just to clear some of this,

make our trail.

This is just so dense.

This is very unusual for...

anything that I've ever came across before.

My name is Jamie.

I'm from Scotland.

And I'm a bushcraft instructor.

I've got to make sure that there's nothing in my way that's going to harm me,

'cause I'm completely open to the elements here.

I'm just clearing a path,

just so I can kind of see the ground more,

see what I'm putting my feet onto.

But I can't make camp here.

All I'm thinking about right now

is getting to location and setting up a shelter.

I'm glad I'm getting this chance to be back out in the jungle

to experience this environment again,

even though I survived 21 days on my African challenge.

I have food.

[woman 3] Jamie, you're awesome.

Come on! Yes!

[Jamie] I'm doing this to get redemption

in a way from what happened in Peru.

That was quite a catastrophic way to leave a challenge,

so, I'm back in the jungle to try this again.

I've just been focusing myself on jungle survival,

getting into that mindset

and accepting that what happened in Peru might happen again.

And I've just got to be tougher about things.

That is a nasty looking spider there.

[narrator] Jamie begins his solo challenge

in the Rupununi Jungle of Guyana,

one of the least populated places on Earth.

This dense swamp is saturated with flesh-eating insects,

including the Aedes aegypti mosquito,

which transmits deadly diseases like yellow fever, malaria and Zika.

[mosquitoes buzzing]

[Jamie] Wow!

This looks like a...

a good place where I could set up a shelter.

There's a strong tree there,

I could use as support.

So, I'm gonna call this place home tonight,

and hopefully for the next 21 days.

[narrator] As a bushcraft instructor,

Jamie enters this solo challenge with a vast primitive skill set.

But after leaving Peru, only two days into the challenge,

Jamie's SSR starts at 6.9.

[Jamie] When I'm in an environment like this,

I know that fire is priority.

It keeps the bugs away.

I can't explain how important that is.

I definitely don't want the same thing to happen as in Peru.

My biggest concern is the... the biting insects.

That's going to be a huge danger for me, especially.

I take a bad reaction to mosquito bites.

So, right now I'm focusing on fire.

That's my main goal.

By splitting it into quarters,

it gives me access to a nice sharp angle

where I can make some fiddlesticks.

Hopefully, that will take a spark.

This is a great place to set up a fire.

The cave, that's a great backup

just in case I would ever need it.

In case it does start raining or when it starts getting dark.

My fire starter. Thank you very much.

If it really does rain when I'm making my shelter,

I can really just run in there and tend to the fire and it shouldn't go out.

Look at that.

Amazing.

Nighttime entertainment, this.

Not only does it...

[thunder rumbling]

[Jamie] Just in time.

[thunder rumbling]

So, I'm gonna camp out here right outside the cave.

And I'm just going to keep feeding the fire all night.

My main focus right now,

just gathering as much firewood, processing it.

I'm gonna try and chop it up into little bits,

stack it, so I've always got a fresh supply of wood throughout the night.

The feeling I've got right now beats any feeling I've ever had

from getting this fire made successfully from bow drill.

The feeling I've got right now making a fire in this environment

using natural resources.

Bring it on, man.

[Terra] I'm gonna crawl into my cave

and, uh, I'm going to attempt to get some kind of rest.

Even though I've got this debris shelter built,

I didn't get a fire started.

And look at these [bleep] little bees all over me,

that are just killing me.

Tomorrow I need to make a big ass fire

'cause I can't stand these [bleep] bugs.

[Jamie] [bleep]

There's bumps all over my skin.

Argh! These [bleep] mosquitoes!

[bleep] off, man!

[bleep] was that?

This is horrible.

[groans]

This place is hell.

[Jamie] I just saw one. [bleep] A, man.

[bleep] mosquitoes everywhere.

This is no joke.

Mosquitoes are definitely my nemesis.

Definitely.

This is what's going to send me down a slippery slope.

Look at that.

That's brilliant. Isn't it?

They're on fire.

Nothing comes close to the mosquito.

I mean, it is the biggest killer in the world.

I know that the mosquitoes are going to come out soon,

so, I'm just going to go and try and find some termite nests.

And I want to try and put the termite nest on the fire,

and hopefully that'll get them away.

My body's just so run down right now.

And on top of everything else for that matter,

I'm hungry.

Oh!

Termite nest.

Found one.

If you put the termite nest on the fire,

hopefully that'll get them away

'cause I know that the mosquitoes are going to come out soon.

Here we go.

I've got my mosquito net,

got my termite mounted on the fire.

And it's sending the smoke right over my body,

which is great.

It's going to keep those mosquitoes away.

I hope for the rest of this challenge.

Those things are horrible.

When it comes to bugs, this place is [bleep] awful.

Definitely makes you feel like less of a human

and more like a dumpster in a city alley

that's been used by all kinds of different restaurants

namely those with weird foods.

Oh, my God. Stop biting me.

Biting me on the junk now.

I don't know how much of that I can take.

Really don't.

It is only day two and I am being just...

annihilated by bugs over and over and over.

I can understand if they were just on my back or on my shoulders

but they're in my face, they're in my eyes, they're in my ears,

they're in my butthole, they're everywhere.

The best thing to do about them insects is fire.

And I didn't take the fire starter

because I want this to be a primitive challenge.

I want it to be a challenge of my actual skills

and not just being handed everything to do the challenge with.

I'm going to go ahead and work on making my bow drill kit.

And what I'm looking for is just something that I could possibly use

that's not green.

Just to at least try a friction fire.

This is pretty much the...

not only the first dry wood I found

but the first dry wood that's not just rotten to the core.

I need to make a big ass fire.

That shouldn't bend at all.

That's pretty thick.

It looks like it's pretty strong.

My skills are very well adapted for all kinds of climates.

When it comes to bow drill,

I have practiced all kinds of different ways to make fires.

And I really expect

that while I'm out here, I'll be able to make a friction fire

without an issue.

Oh, my God!

Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn!

I don't know if I can go 21 days covered in bugs constantly.

Not sleeping, not eating.

If I can't get this fire with these bugs...

God damn it.

...then I can't use the smoke and the ash to get rid of them.

[bleep]

[Fernando] Oh, wow!

This is my hunting blinds that I was gonna use today,

and it's been destroyed

by either wind or elephants.

There's much more covered the last time I used it.

Oh, yeah.

Definitely elephants.

A bunch of fresh elephant dung here.

There's definitely a common theme here

of the elephants, kind of, crapping my style

and scaring away animals, destroying my blind.

[narrator] Fernando has endured five days in the South African savannah,

where he's been able to secure water, fire and shelter.

[Fernando] I'm not claiming victory yet.

I... I'm just so traumatized for my days in the jungle.

[narrator] But he has yet to find a source of food.

His safety has been threatened by nocturnal predators...

[Fernando] They're everywhere.

[trumpeting]

[narrator] ...and a herd of territorial elephants.

[Fernando] It'd be nice to have a big kill now,

because I'm really hungry.

So, I am not a bow hunter by trade or by skill.

But I've been trying to practice as much as possible...

uh, the last few weeks.

And hopefully that practice pays off.

A big goal of mine and a huge success for me

would be to use that bow and to kill a large game.

There are some birds that were here in the riverbed.

And they just kind of scurried it up the hill into the brush.

Another hungry night.

[Cheeny groans]

I still get up often to restoke the fire.

I mean, it's blazing.

And I'm...

I'm not far from it.

It's putting off good heat but I'm still so [bleep] cold.

[groans]

Night here is the worst.

And so many more nights to [bleep] suffer through.

[thunderclap]

It's been raining the whole night.

That's huge, innit?

Unfortunately, I'll need to kill it,

and then, I'll cook it tomorrow and eat it.

It's sad having to do that.

But that's survival.

I've got to eat.

Thank you very much, frog.

[Jamie] No way!

I don't think it's in there.

It's gone.

I killed it and I sat it under my bed,

and it's gone.

I didn't hear anything coming under my bed.

But it was raining quite hard.

There was a lot of noise from the rain.

It was a nice fat one.

It had big legs and big arms.

It could have been a Goliath spider.

They eat things like that.

Hmm.

[Cheeny] It's the morning of day six.

Thank God.

Another cold night.

[growls and laughs]

Oh!

Look at this. Look at that sunrise, baby.

My lips bleeding.

Yep.

Chapped lips. My lips are bleeding.

I can see my breath.

The grass is covered in frost.

Every night was this cold.

Midnight, maybe, 1:00 a.m. I wish,

but it is so cold.

I can't stand being [bleep] cold constantly.

I think I'm pretty tough

but when you're naked in freezing temperatures constantly,

like, that takes a special kind of person.

Another long [bleep] night.

[bleep]

It's so [bleep] cold out here.

[bleep]

God! I gotta figure something out with this shelter.

I think I'm gonna build kind of a lean-to,

modified lean-to thing right here.

Help block the wind,

and help keep some of the heat from the fire inside.

I'm switching from the branches to rocks for the walls

because the rocks are going to hold more heat,

because I've been sleeping right here,

so, I'm gonna stack the rocks this way.

Flatter the better to make a wall.

Well, rocks are great for the back.

They're heavy and they would give the support that the wall needs.

The wall is like legit now.

It's at least knee height.

I'm gonna need some Y-sticks for supports.

So, right now I'm putting together some tripods,

so, I can rest my poles across them.

And then I can focus on the thatching

and start stacking branches.

That'll help keep a lot of the heat in for me at night.

So, doing this challenge,

even though it's quite miserable at times and frustrating,

there are moments that you just can't beat.

Rock wall goes all the way around inside

like so. Got my bed,

and a big thick ass roof.

I'm not trying to toot my own horn but toot, toot.

It's my fourth day in a row eating catfish.

I've got catfish that I heated up in the pan with a little bit of water,

I've got the skin from the catfish

that I'm smoking and crisping up by the fire.

I'll be five days in a row eating catfish.

Hopefully, it'll give me enough energy

until I can find my next food source.

[Fernando sighs] We use these...

and go to a new spot.

So, I'm officially feeling the fatigue of like the lack of food.

Um, today's the first day where I definitely feel like...

a different... a different gear of fatigue.

I'm moving my blind from where the elephants destroyed it...

to here because lots of natural foliage already here.

Just making my blind building a lot easier.

And also I've seen that same herd

the last couple days

on that far side of the riverbank there.

Now, I'm going to clear my ground a little bit here.

So, here I am again.

Like, having to work a little bit extra

because the elephants kind of messed up my operation.

At this point, it is a little bit comical and frustrating

'cause I am so weak right now, but...

this one feels good.

There's a phenomenon called "Jumping the string," that animals do.

When the animal hears that string be released,

they twitch and they jump on that and they flee.

But that's the risk of taking a far shot.

Hunting is not easy and you need a lot of skill

and you need things to go your way.

I feel really tired.

And whenever I stand up,

I feel like I'm going to pass out. [laughs]

[Terra] All right. Right now, I'm going to take...

all of this little stuff that I just got.

I'm going to try to put it in a sunny spot,

so that maybe any moisture that's in it can be dried out.

If I can get this all dried out,

it'll be a perfect, little, tender bundle for the bow drill.

I really don't want to give up on making a permanent fire.

I'm hoping that all of my stuff will be dry

so I can get some fire.

While that is sitting in the sun drying some more,

I'm gonna go get some water.

I don't really like the looks of my seep well,

so I think I'm gonna go ahead and take the chance

of trying the river water.

Hopefully, I don't get some kind of weird parasite or something from the water

but at this point I need something,

so this is what I'm gonna do.

[sighs in relief]

Now that I've got a little bit of dry wood,

I actually have really good hope

that I'm going to have a fire here in just a little while.

Getting this fire means everything right now.

Damn it!

Son of a bitch!

Son of a bitch!

Just [bleep] do it!

Everything is against me.

I'm beat up and eat up.

The only way to step it up is to get a fire.

God [bleep] damn it!

That was so close.

[breathing heavily]

I've literally never had this much trouble making a bow drill ever.

I've never taken days to make a fire.

[exhales]

I feel like punching something.

I feel like doing something because I'm so pissed off

that I can't get this going.

I would say that, at this point,

I am starting to regret not bringing the fire starter at least with me,

even if I had just not planned to use it.

I really wish I had brought it with me.

I might have screwed myself.

[Jamie] Look at the bites.

You can't really see them.

They're... they're actually...

they're doing a lot better than what they were.

Thanks to the termites nest.

That is huge.

I can feel myself just relaxing more

and so, hopefully, I can get myself a nice bit of food.

I'm getting quite hungry...

Let's have a look to see what I've got here.

This is called the tree of life because it provides everything you need.

Also provides food.

You can see these little nuts.

A lot of them have been opened but there'll be some that are still closed.

And if there's no holes on them,

and I crack that open, there's going to be a grub inside that I can eat.

And they're really tasty.

So, I'm gonna fill my bag up right now.

So, I'm looking for the ones left with no hole in them.

The hole means that the grub has grown and crawled its way out.

I'm getting eaten up right now,

but this is worth it.

Hopefully, I can come back here on a daily basis

and maybe get some fresh ones.

This is great.

Loads of grubs here.

I'm really happy about the amount of nuts I was able to find.

Every one of these should hopefully have a grub inside it.

But they're quite hard to open.

So, I'm just going to make a tool

that's going to help me get into these nuts more and more safely.

That's going to hold that in place

while I give it a whack.

That is tricky.

That's the grub inside.

I'm just going to pick it out and eat it.

It's a big fat one.

They don't taste like what you would expect a grub to taste like.

It taste kind of like coconut a little bit.

Really nice.

[Fernando whispering] I have been sitting in this blind

for a long time.

I mean, I'm... I'm 20 feet from an elephant at this point.

I have to keep a safe distance like got to make sure I don't like...

get them upset.

I mean, one charge from an elephant,

and not only is the challenge over, my life is over.

Oh, [bleep]. What's that?

Oh!

Huh.

I caught dinner.

That's awesome.

You never know what you're gonna get.

I find food.

That's just how these challenges go.

All right. Mr. Chameleon.

I actually do feel bad about this.

This is a beautiful creature,

but, um, I haven't eaten, so...

thank you, Mr. Chameleon for giving your life.

I feel good.

Morale is high.

All right. I'm gonna cook this chameleon.

I've never eaten this before.

I really don't know...

what I'm doing.

To be totally honest, this does not look that appealing.

I'm gonna eat it

'cause I'm really hungry.

There actually really isn't much meat to him.

All right. Let's just try it, though.

What do I care.

Let's see what chameleon meat tastes like.

Mmm...

Mmm. Okay.

Mmm. Yeah. Not bad. Not bad.

Yeah.

Tastes kind of like snake.

And this is what survival is.

It's little small victories.

And you have more small victories and setbacks,

and you... you survive.

[elephant trumpeting]

[Terra] Get off me.

I'm just getting ate up by mosquitoes.

The issue is when I'm just constantly, constantly getting eaten.

I need a [bleep] fire.

Twenty-four, seven, never stopping.

God damn! This place is awful.

On my next challenge out, I will bring a fire starter.

[insects buzzing]

[Cheeny] Oh! I'm so tired of being cold.

It's really uncomfortable...

So, I'm in my shelter and...

I don't know if it's really doing much to help me keep the heat in,

I'm feeling the rocks behind me and they feel ice cold and...

my moccasins are working pretty good,

but my feet are still cold.

Tonight it's gonna be a really cold night.

I just don't want to be cold anymore.

Can't do this every 30 minutes.

I'm [bleep] over it.

This is a non-stop battle at night.

It's [bleep] ridiculous.

Argh! I [bleep] hate this.

I'm not gonna freeze my [bleep] ass off every night.

Freezing my ovaries off.

These are my hash marks

showing what day I've just completed.

I think everyone has different techniques to stay strong mentally.

[Cheeny] Over here is my... my day markers.

And everyday I just mark a new line

just to see my progress.

A fun morning ritual.

Every morning I'll check off the day it is.

It is day seven.

Day seven.

[Terra] That means it is one week in, two weeks out.

A third of the way through.

[Fernando] First seven days like a orientation.

The last seven days are a kind of countdown.

Day seven, and now I'm in like the thick of it.

Counting the days, that keeps me going.

Don't mind if I do.

And right now it looks like I've got a long road ahead of me,

but I know in no time it's going to be full of hash marks.

Ooh!

Hopefully, not the last notch.

[Terra] So, when I made the decision to leave the fire starter behind...

I absolutely thought that in this jungle somewhere...

I would be able to adequately and easily find the materials I need

to make a damn fire.

I was way wrong.

I came out here to do everything as primitively as possible

and I think using the fire starter would kind of negate that.

I just... I don't have it in me to try anymore.

I put more into this fire than I have ever put into any fire before ever.

As much as I wanted to do this the right way,

I'm gonna go do it the next to primitive way

'cause if I don't, I will be forced to tap

'cause I can't stand these [bleep] bugs.

I'm going to try to use some of the last energy I have

to go back up this mountain and collect that fire starter.

If I don't, I'm screwed.

I have to do this.

It's either that or keep killing myself trying to make a fire.

This hike is going to take a couple of hours.

It's gonna hurt.

It's going to suck a lot.

So, I'm gonna go ahead and head up the mountain

and grab that fire starter.

Here we go.

I don't care who looks at it as a fail.

I might not complete all of my goals,

but damn it, I'll complete at least one.

I'm gonna complete the challenge.

I think being up here,

reaching a higher and higher elevation,

along with the CO2

coming out of the crap that's on the ground.

There's a... huge, huge, huge amount

of leaf litter just decaying.

And that decaying produces CO2.

CO2 displaces oxygen

and makes it a lot harder for us to breathe.

[narrator] The higher altitude and elevated CO2 levels

can lead to headaches, nausea and dizziness.

[Terra sighing in exhaustion] [bleep] sakes.

I'm feeling very tired.

This is a lot to do with...

no food in your system.

Oh!

It's a tough hill to climb

when you literally have hills to climb.

But I can't give up.

I've got to do what I've got to do.

And I got to do it now,

or this could be leading up to disaster.

[exhales]

I wish I could explain...

the cold here.

It's cold.

The shelter didn't help me at all last night.

It was so cold, I couldn't feel my feet.

I was shivering, my teeth were chattering.

I was hoping the heat from the fire

would get pushed back from the stone

and would come into here and...

heat everything up but...

it didn't.

I had to get up so many times last night anyway

just to keep feeding the fire to keep it big enough to keep me warm.

It was just all night.

They're 14 hour nights.

That's a long time to be cold.

I don't want to do 14 more nights out here.

I don't even want to do one more.

I have nothing to prove to anyone or to myself.

I just have so many emotions right now.

I know if I leave, I'm gonna regret it.

But if I don't and if I stay, I'm gonna [bleep] hate it.

I don't know what's worse.

Having the regret of leaving...

or suffering the rest of the challenge.

I'm not even gonna bother with this fire.

I'm not gonna need it tonight

because I won't be here.

I never in a million years...

thought that I would tap out so soon.