Day 2

6:17 am 73 degrees

"It rained just before dawn," says Methos to the camera. He and Amanda are standing outside their dugout style shelter. "The roof held and it shouldn't take long to finish it today, but the air is so humid our cordage fibers might not dry out sufficiently."

Amanda turns from where she is checking a small piece of hide soaking in a makeshift bamboo tube cut into one side to function like a bowl. Though it's not immediately obvious that the skin is from the monkey they ate yesterday, the camera doesn't linger on it.

"I'll pick more fruit while I'm out," she says while putting on her sandals. She puts her knife and the slingshot into her bag.

"I'll begin work on the oven."

With no more farewell than that, half the camera crew traipses off with Amanda. Methos digs in a somewhat drier spot on the edge of their shelter where a wide rock shelf protrudes outward and slightly upwards near the floor of their shelter. Using his hands and a piece of bamboo like a shovel, he clears away some dirt below the rock, but not enough to dislodge it. Under that he digs a deep, narrow hole.

"I'd rather not place the oven in the back of our dugout. Too much smoke and heat," Methos explains. "The nights are as sweltering as the days here, but I expect during extended rainfall and damp we will welcome the oven warmth then. May need to dry out wood with the very fire it is intended to be fueling."

He takes the stones that they cast aside the night before when they leveled the floor of their shelter. After lining his pit with rocks, he sets a fire inside the bottom of it. On the surface, he rings the rim of the pit with more rock and builds a wall on the exposed side until it meets the protruding rock. The exterior ring and wall he cakes in mud mixed with sand and grass.

"Water can't flood the pit now and hopefully this side wall will keep the weather out. An oven requires less tending than an open campfire and though the food cooks slower, it's worth it."

Leaving the fire going, he returns to splitting more bamboo poles with his stone hatchet.

Meanwhile elsewhere

6:27 am 73 degrees

The hike is a little slippery and slows Amanda down as she leaves camp, but the earlier rain wasn't heavy enough to produce puddles.

She detours inland and despite the thick canopy and no path to follow, Amanda finds the stand of palm trees seemingly without effort. Her aim with the slingshot is good and before long she dislodges enough orange and yellow colored fruit to fill half her bag.

She also terrifies a large green snake so badly, it drops itself out of the tree in a panic. Though Amanda gives chase, she fails to find it in the undergrowth. Giving up with a sigh, she makes her way back to the palms.

"That snake would have been a good meal, but there are other food sources here. Even mortals can eat almost any fruit or vegetable. Chew a little and see how it goes before eating more," she explains while picking up the palm fruit. "Few things will make you ill for more than a day and even less are genuinely poison. If other mammals, especially monkeys, are eating something, it is likely safe. Just wash it very, very well first," she warns carefully emphasizing her words.

Hesitating in her work, Amanda looks more carefully at the plants and other trees they'd previously bypassed in their eagerness to find shelter.

"Unfamiliar roots, nuts, flowers and leaves are less likely to be edible, but may be worth a try," she says contemplatively.

Cutting an assortment of foliage and even digging a few up to look at the roots, she begins to fill her bag. Some she discards at once when they weep an unpleasant smelling goop. In a low spot, she finds a tree sprouting green and brown pods twice the size of her hand.

She drives her knife into a pod that already has a split in it and reacts in surprise when it reveals large seeds. "I thought it might be a type of coconut," she says to the camera.

The Malabar chestnut, also known as the Guyana chestnut, is low in calories, but high in vitamins. Despite more frequently being sold as an ornamental called the Money tree, the large leaves, flowers and nuts are edible. However, the nuts are toxic to smaller mammals and possibly even to humans if consumed raw in large quantities.

By the time she reaches the stream to wash her foraged food, her bag is at risk of bursting.

"Taste is a fair guide," she explains as she nibbles on a clean leaf only to quickly spit it out and rinse her mouth. She eyes it disdainfully, "Obviously that is not a good one."

She tries a root next and can't sink her teeth in it. "Though some things are too hard raw, they might be good if cooked. I'll save that one for the oven. Also, just because one part of a plant can be eaten doesn't mean all of it can."

Continuing her demonstration, she washes and samples each type of leaf, flower, seed and root she has in her collection, rejecting several. This process of elimination lightens her load considerably and she continues on her journey to her rat trap. The bucket is still upright and its ramp attached just as she left it the night before.

"Let's see," says Amanda as she looks into her bucket. "Wow! I caught a lizard."

The Tegu is a large lizard species similar to the monitor lizard and they are prized as pets. This one is a juvenile and weighs about 10 lbs, but adult males can grow over 4 ft long and weigh as much as 50 lbs.

The camera peers at the very unhappy looking reptile curled around onto itself in the bottom of the bucket and it is just able to keep its snout above water.

Amanda reaches in and grabs it out. It thrashes a bit as she inquires, "We do have leave to eat this, I trust? I seem to recall reptiles being eaten in other episodes of this show."

As none of the camera crew are permitted to speak to the survivalists while filming the show, her question is superfluous. She quickly dispatches the lizard and then looks back into the bucket to pull out two drowned mice by their tails. "Huh, I wonder if it was trying to get the mice or the fruit?"

The Guiana Bristley mouse is a favorite prey of native lizards, but Tegu also eat fruit.

Amanda resets her bucket trap with more fruit.

9:24 am 78 degrees

"Lucy, I'm home!" Amanda shouts as she approaches their shelter.

Either Methos is unfamiliar with the American tv show catchphrase or not inclined to respond in kind. She continues on blithely, "Grocery shopping went well. I not only have fruit, but also nuts, vegetables, ruffage and meat."

Methos has a sizable stack of long, half-round bamboo nearby and he stops his work of stretching the monkey skin onto a frame to see what she has. Amanda passes the large lizard over to him and sets the mice aside. The bag she hangs from a tree branch.

"Even better than we hoped for," he says happily looking at the reptile and the contents of the bag. "Oven is ready, too."

Amanda sorts her produce, leaving the palm fruit in her bag and choosing some of the smaller leaves to wrap the roots and nuts separately. When those are prepared, she turns to her catch. The camera angle moves to follow Methos rather than film Amanda cleaning and skinning the lizard.

Kneeling at the oven pit with a stick in his hand, Methos says to the camera, "I'm moving these coals to the sides, otherwise the food will burn rather than steam."

Earth ovens date back to the Neolithic period and even today some modern cultures continue to use a form of pit cooking.

He turns to a nearby cylinder of bamboo laid lengthwise with a hole in its side which allows it to function as a cooking pot. He uses sticks to remove a hot stone from the oven and drops it into the improvised pot to make the liquid boil.

Amanda eyes the concoction Methos sets to heating. "I agree it's better to do this the fast way," she says, clearly continuing a previous discussion and not sounding entirely convinced yet. "I've only ever done vegetable tanning."

"That takes half a year. I've processed buckskin in matter of days with brains."

"What about the lizard skin?"

"I'll provide an astringent for it."

"I can't tell you how happy I am to leave that to you."

Methos doesn't hide his amusement at her relief that she needn't participate in the next phase of this particular method of tanning.

"Wish we had salt," Amanda mutters quietly as she passes the first bundle of food to him and looks at the camera explaining, "Can't preserve any meat in this damp without it. It's vital on days when there is no game. Really limits our range of travel, too."

Methos only gives her a sympathetic look as he stacks the meat bundles on a bed of green fronds and tucks more around them as a barrier against the coals. The nut and vegetable bundles are next, then Methos pours a little water over it all and tops it all with more fronds. Several wide pieces of bamboo are next overlaying it and he buries it all with several shovel fulls of dirt.

Methos eyes his work critically. "I should have made it wider."

"It's perfect, don't worry," she says. "Time for breakfast."

"Or elevenses," says Methos as he peers up at the sky and judging it closer to midday than morning.

They both suddenly stop and sniff at the air. "More rain is coming," Methos predicts for the camera's benefit.

Without any real pause, they eat the palm fruit while also helping each other lay more bamboo roofing. They move in concert, grabbing another fruit from the bag after they climb down and chewing it while going up with more wood. When their roof completely spans the divide between the rocky dirt walls, Amanda restocks their firewood and Methos cuts a good deal of vegetation to insulate their roof.

Only when the rain begins do they stop to rest in their dugout.

Impressively, the survivalists have consumed approximately a thousand calories each in the first 24 hours of their challenge. However, they have easily used three times that working to build their shelter, exploring the terrain and hunting for food.

3:02 pm 86 degrees

The camera lens is protected from the rain, which has abated to a drizzle. Amanda and Methos can be seen making cordage. Methos sets aside his pile of grass rope he was working on and goes to uncover their oven. Lingering heat quickly becomes steam in the wet air.

Using two sticks as tongs, he lays out their meal. Each leaf packet is blackened on the outside, but neither of them hesitate to eat the leaves along with the contents.

"I feel like I'm at an exotic gourmet social club, but without the wine. These taste like chestnuts," Amanda declares in delight when they try the seeds from the pod.

"Absolutely, we must collect more of those tomorrow," Methos agrees. He tries the next mystery leaf packet and coughs at the taste. "This root is awful. Here, try it."

"Why would I eat it if you say it's awful?" she exclaims.

He shrugs in amusement and says, "I was curious if you would."

She wrinkles her nose and answers flatly, "I think I'll trust your assessment this time."

Day 3

7:22 am 77 degrees

Their dugout shelter now sports massive bundles of cordage coiled and hanging from a few roots sticking out of the rocky dirt walls. They've enlarged their pit oven and a new fire is blazing in it.

After another breakfast of fruit, Amanda and Methos work on the bones leftover from their two kills.

While Methos shatters the bones into fragments, Amanda attaches the brown diamond they found the first day onto a notched stick. With the pointiest end up and wrapped with their nettle string, it looks rather like an oversized pencil.

A time lapse of their assembly line of sorts begins. Amanda scores the outline of tool into a bone piece with her diamond point. When she's cut one out, she passes it to Methos who sands the edges on a stone and sharpens them. He also sands long, straighter fragments that are leftover. Eventually, she runs out of usable bone to carve into and turns to a piece Methos has already finished sanding. Bracing it carefully, she spins her diamond tip tool between her palms to drill a hole into the wider, blunt end.

The end result is an awl, a scraper for cleaning off fish scales and hides, and two different needles.

"This needle is for naalbinding," she says pronouncing it 'knoll binding' and showing it off to the camera. "It's slower going than crochet or knitting, though the stitches look similar, these don't unravel if the string gets snagged or broken. This needle can also be used to sew a seam in animal hide by threading holes we puncture with the awl."

"We'll make sheaths for our knives when the monkey and lizard skins finish tanning. This larger needle," says Methos pointing, "is actually a shuttle for making the second most essential survival tool after the knife: a net. We work on cordage when it rains and after sundown, so we almost have enough string made from nettles and grass. Depending on how our next hunting expedition goes, we may make fish hooks next."

"Yesterday evening, we had no luck setting up an ambush using the two mice as bait. Nothing came for them but flies," Amanda says. "However, something knocked over my bucket this morning and took whatever my catch was." She looks aggravated. "We'll keep trying new locations, but I'm not sure if it's going to continue to be a reliable means for us to obtain bait if bigger animals keep wrecking it."

Methos tries to cheer her up by suggesting, "We could stake out the bucket tonight. But now," he tells the camera, "we are going to try using these mice to go fishing."

Carrying the rather nasty smelling dead mice, some string, their knives and bags they hike upstream to a place where the water is wider and the current slow.

10:52 am 83 degrees

At the river, Amanda wades in first saying, "I've picked a spot with a rocky bottom so we stir up less silt." The camera view changes helpfully to an underwater shot of how the water is fairly clear before switching back to her. "To prevent ourselves from losing the knives in the river, I've attached lanyards to the handles." She holds up her arm to show the stone knife swinging from the cordage wrapped around her wrist.

On shore, Methos cuts a thin, sturdy limb that has a dip in its center and skewers the mice on the center branches. Then he binds his knife securely to his wrist just as Amanda has done.

He joins her in the water standing closer to shore and he hands her one end of the stick. "As you can see, I'm not venturing as deeply as Amanda has and with good reason. Hollywood would have you believe that piranha will skeletonize anyone in minutes. Quite ridiculous really, however -"

"Can't risk the dangling bits," she interrupts sounding amused, but also serious.

"Indeed," he agrees. "Keeping all my limbs and other parts after five thousand years is no minor accomplishment."

They deliberately splash the water to make noise without losing too much water clarity and then lower the branch just enough to submerge the mice while allowing their hands to remain out of the water. They both grasp their knives.

It doesn't take long to attract the piranhas and the underwater camera shows the first to arrive biting a leg off of a mouse. The tips of both their knives can be seen plunging after it, but it escapes. The second to attack the bait is stabbed, clouding the water with blood.

Piranha have multiple razor sharp teeth that they use to tear viciously at their prey and jaws with the strength to crush bone. The locals who fish for piranha are often left with scars.

Above the water, a red piranha thrashes on Methos' knife, snapping it's large teeth and making an audible growling noise. He swings his arm wide and with a flick of his wrist flings the fish off his blade. The piranha tumbles through the air and lands with a thud as it hits the rocks on the bank. Seconds later, another lands stunned beside it, thrown by Amanda. As more fish arrive for the bait and they abandon their baited stick in favor of simply grabbing fish and tossing them on shore.

Behind Methos, something large darts out of the shallow water and the sound of it scrambling can be heard over the splashing fish.

"Gator!" Amanda shouts in alarm when she sees it.

Methos spins around and lunges too late to stop the seven foot caiman from stealing a fish. However, the reptile's long body cannot turn around so quickly and Methos blocks its path back to the water.

The Black Caiman, referred to locally as an alligator, is a fearsome predator growing as much as 16 ft or longer. It mostly preys on fish, but will ambush any animal that ventures too close to the water's edge and it is known to attack and even kill people.

Amanda joins the fray and begins pelting the caiman with rocks which it completely ignores. Tail thrashing, it acts like it's about to snap its jaws at Methos for standing in its way, but seems to remember it can't do that without dropping the fish in its mouth. Amanda grabs its tail, only to lose her grip and fall backwards onto the rocks. The distraction is enough for the caiman to begin to pass by Methos. He jumps onto its long back, but his weight does nothing to slow the caiman down.

Methos tumbles off the reptile in defeat as it slides into the water. "It's no use," he gasps out and watches as it swims away with its stolen fish.

"Yeah," Amanda sighs in agreement as she gets up from the rocks. "I'm not certain these knives would pierce the hide without breaking anyway." She frowns and asks, "We deliberately fished at midday to avoid them. Does this breed not hunt a night?"

"Opportunistic apex predator," he states the obvious with a shrug and he helps her pick up fish.

Amanda lets out a shriek when one piranha recovers enough to bite a chunk out of her hand. She thumps the fish hard against the rocks in retaliation though her injury heals in mere moments. Even Methos has to pry a piranha off of his finger before they are done.

Day 6

9:11 am 81 degrees

"Yesterday, while it was raining," Methos says, "we were given a debriefing on what animals are endangered and protected here."

"And a list of some that are just off limits regardless of logic or sense," adds Amanda, still sounding a little resentful. "Eating a lizard and the piranhas is just dandy, but dining on monkey flesh is offensive. Who knew?"

"And it's a good thing we didn't manage to take down the Black Caiman after all. Apparently, the species is still bouncing back from aggressive hunting."

"Well, enough of that. I suppose it's time to get started on the plumbing."

They dedicate much of the day to building a bamboo pipe together. It runs from the waterfall, sloping slightly downward as it runs along the top edge of the bluff. The pipe sticks out to a spot a little outside their dugout above their heads where the water can't interfere with their usual paths. The water flows constantly, dropping to a low spot and trickling down the bank to the stream.

Amanda hands him a bamboo cup to fill and they both drink water.

"No need to climb down to the stream when we are thirsty now," Methos says proudly when it is done. "And it is high enough to be a shower."

"Much pleasanter than fighting the current or being pummeled by the waterfall to wash up," she agrees while she inspects a bundle suspended over their fire. "I think these leaves are dry enough to make a tea and a pottage will do nicely for supper."

"I'm glad you thought of adding running water to our dugout, Amanda. It was a nice change from working on the netting. I'm terribly out of practice. I think I'll build us a pair of folding chairs tomorrow."

"Methos," she says his name in a cajoling tone. "Be a dear and build a fan first, please? Even though we hang the skins in the smoke, the tanning is attracting flies. I'll finish your hammock for you," she offers to sweeten the deal.

"As you like," he agrees without hesitation. "I'm in no hurry to tie more knots."

While she sets their vegetables stewing and tackles the hammock he hasn't completed, Methos constructs a very simple water wheel under the spout. He carves fan blades and attaches them to poles and crude gears. The resulting circulating fan is a bit noisy making a rhythmic thumping sound, but the breeze it creates inside their shelter is a welcome relief from the heat and it blows away insects.

"Lovely," she compliments his work.

They both take a moment to simply enjoy standing in front of the hydropowered fan. "Far more comfortable," he says.

"Especially now that we both have hammocks," she tells him as she hands him the finished netting. "No more sleeping on dirt tonight."

On previous episodes of Naked and Afraid, none of the survivalists have attempted hydropower before. Who knows what Amanda and Methos will achieve next?

...oOo...

End chapter 2

I promise we'll get to the beer next time.