Original subtitles

That was a big storm last night.

I'm feeling very motivated to keep working on my shelter.

Look at that.

A little bit more protected.

I just basically fainted.

If I had done that anywhere else,

the results could have been very bad.

This is Dug North.

I'm officially tapping out.

I need a long-term shelter.

The type of shelter I've chosen to build

is going to be a huge calorie expenditure,

but I think it's going to really help me

be successful here.

OK, we go. Easy.

Oh, my gosh.

Oh, it's a catfish.

Mwah! Oh, my gosh.

We are having catfish tonight, guys.

Mm, mm, mm, that's delicious.

Oh, my God.

There is an antelope.

I'm going to go and try to stalk him.

Winning this competition means a lot to me.

I have to support my family as much as I can.

They call this place the Land of Great Thirst.

The great Karoo Desert, South Africa.

We are in one of the most inhospitable places on Earth.

Ten participants.

Whoever can stay the longest wins.

It's pretty simple.

I found the baboons.

There's ten of them, but I only have five arrows.

This place is dry, dry, dry.

The sun's beating down on you every day.

I'm so tired, and I'm so thirsty.

Oh, man.

I really don't feel safe drinking this water.

This is a place to be, if not feared,

treated with a lot of respect.

I changed my mind!

Oh, look at the size of that thing.

There's a big herd of wildebeest right there.

Rhino tracks.

Meat's back on the menu, boys.

They call Cape Buffalo the black death for a reason.

They'll just straight up kill you.

We don't control the game.

Here you go. Flooding.

This is nothing compared to what's coming.

It hurts so much, man.

It's freaking ice.

So the question is, how strong of a mind

do you need to have to win this?

Whoo!

What the did I get myself into?

Long cold night.

The last one to tap walks out of here with 500 grand.

This is one of the hardest things

that a person can do in their life.

Oh, my gosh.

It's another great day in Africa.

Middle of the night, just restocking the fire.

Sorry about that, fire.

I know you're working so hard to stay alive.

I'm working so hard to keep you alive.

Because I didn't bring a ferro rod,

I cannot let my fire die.

Every night, I have to get out of my shelter

six to seven times to restock the fire.

This is, like, the slowest night ever.

It's really damp and cold,

and it feels like I'm just sitting

and waiting for that sun to come up and shine on me.

Hmm.

Oh.

So nights are becoming less and less bearable.

I'm hoping to build some chimneys

to make it nice and warm inside of my tent.

Happiest time of the day, when the sun

comes over that mountain.

I am thinking about hunting strategies.

How can I get some animal?

Hunting is hard. I feel frustrated.

But I don't want to give up.

I have to continue trying.

I try not to approach certain tasks

during a survival situation as a challenge,

but more of a way to adapt.

I don't want to fight through it.

I want to live my way through it.

When the river is dry, it's like a paved highway.

I don't want to be a hunter.

I want to be the cat

that blends in with the environment.

Look.

There's pig tracks.

Interesting.

Wow, warthog.

A very active site.

So many hoofprints.

This area, all dug up.

I could hunt them.

But the problem with them is that they are so elusive.

This is promising for hunting.

I have spotted dens, which I believe is a warthog.

Little pig, little pig, let me in.

I haven't seen any pigs.

They are probably huddled up

right now inside of their dens.

How far den go? I don't know.

And are the dens connected? I don't know.

Wait for a pig.

But right now, I need to make it back to my site.

Tonight, I need to think about

how I will be able to transport fire

without it dying because it's quite a bit of a hike.

Perhaps I can kill one when I come back.

There's more Paiute.

Let's hope that that brings about a little mouse.

There they are.

Waterbuck, my morning companions.

Anyway, so the plan is to work on the shelter.

Today, shelter is all about the mud.

I want to make sure that my shelter

is protected from the elements and from animals.

Quite hard, so I'm going to have to dig it up a little bit.

I'm hungry.

I knew it was going to be hard

to get meat on this experience,

but I didn't think it would be quite this hard.

I'm really at a pivotal point right now

where I've got to make a decision

between fishing or hunting.

Hunting has been a lot of energy out

and nothing in,

so fishing is what I need to focus on.

All right, so we're going to take this up

using my rain jacket.

I got some Paiute traps out to try

to get some smaller rodents for bait

so that I could get bigger catfish,

because my other bait, it's not working.

Ooh, yeah.

And in the meantime, I want to be productive.

All right.

I am going to just build a big mud dome,

and then, I should actually have

a really warm space for nighttime then.

It's warming up a bit now.

Start working around the base here.

Wilderness therapy,

just the ticket when you're hungry.

When I was about 22,

I started to wake up spiritually,

and I left the corporate job that I was destined for.

This could take a bit longer than I anticipated.

I ended up going to America,

doing some primitive living tracker school.

I just wanted to learn survival skills.

I wanted to understand about plant foods.

I wanted to learn to track.

I wanted to reclaim knowledge that I'd missed out on

growing up in the modern culture

that I was brought up in.

OK, just gonna get this little bit done here.

That experience of living alone

for that long totally changed my life.

I did a lot of seeking

of what the hell is life all about?

Nearly there.

And this is the answer to that.

Being out on the land,

being in sync with the country,

we're all here collectively to look after

the country that we're on.

We're not just here for ourselves,

and that was very powerfully instilled in me.

Oh.

Whew.

Done it.

The rest can just be for later.

I came down here to stretch my legs,

and look what I found, an African fish eagle.

That's a cool, cool bird.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Because!

I crack myself up.

All right, let's go hunting.

The hunting loop I take is fairly flat walking,

so it's pretty easy to do every day

and not burn too much energy.

Wish us luck.

I see animals every single day,

but, unfortunately, none of these animals

are harvestable by my bow.

So I'm going to be focusing on warthog.

I feel super confident that I can find another one.

I know where they live.

I should be able to get another shot opportunity.

Warthogs, where'd you go?

Ooh, look at this.

Maybe because their house caved in from the rain.

Could be.

All right, we just gotta figure out where they went.

How do we do that? I'm not sure.

The one thing I can shoot, and I don't know where they went.

I'm definitely wishing I would have shot

at those warthogs on day six,

but I didn't want to be greedy and take

more than what I needed.

Hindsight is 20/20.

I don't know where the warthogs went.

If only we could hunt waterbucks, guys,

it'd be a different story.

Nothing to cook today.

For that, I need to shed off a bunch of layers.

I can make fire and throw it inside of the burrow.

That's going to do the trick.

I've spotted some pig dens,

and I have this idea of getting them out of the den.

However, I need to get fire to their location,

and it's quite a bit of a hike.

My plan is to gather dry grasses,

transport coal to the location...

Here we go.

And once I make fire, I will attempt to throw it

inside of the shelter.

Pig will try to get out,

and at that moment, I will perhaps make a shot.

Just like that.

I'm losing a lot of energy.

I'm burning a lot of calories.

Ambush is a preferred method of hunting

because I am not exhausting energy

while waiting for an animal,

but first, I have to get the fire going.

I'm starting to feel fear

that I'm not going to be able to last long enough

to win this competition.

At the pig site.

I need to make fire with that--

with that coal quickly.

Otherwise, it will die.

I connect with my sister the most when I am in need.

She is one of my guardian angels,

and...

I feel her presence.

I feel that she is guiding me.

Whether it is true or not, I trust the universe.

It's doing everything good for me.

There, it's going.

Thank you, universe.

I'm going to try that one first.

I don't think there's anybody in there.

This might have been just a silly idea.

I'm sure if there were pigs in there,

I would have heard something.

I'm starting to feel defeated.

I'm starting to feel negativity in me.

Heading back to the tent.

I guess we're back to square one.

Another one.

Oh, the nights are tough.

Not sleeping gets me thinking.

Sitting like this doing nothing makes me think,

"Man, I'm doing nothing.

At home, I could have been doing this and this and this."

I got to prepare a firewood for the winter,

which I'm sure my wife can--

can handle that by herself,

as hard as it would be for her.

I'm beginning to feel that negative impact

on my psychological state.

My thoughts go to unhappy places,

unpleasant places.

The sun will come out in a few minutes.

It's a beautiful sight.

I am thinking of my purpose here.

My wife needs me. My family needs me.

My homestead needs me.

Been waiting for the sun to come out every night.

What do you want from me, universe?

Where are you guiding me? What are you telling me?

This is not the way it's supposed to be.

If life is hard,

it means you're going against the flow.

I need a sign.

Or is-- this is the sign.

Perhaps my purpose here is not to win.

It's to learn.

I realize...

I am not...

invincible.

I accept my failures.

I accept my fate.

The universe don't care about money.

For universe, money doesn't exist.

Well, thank you, South Africa.

Thank you for teaching me something again.

I do want to be a good provider for my family.

Perhaps it's by being there physically

and providing mental and emotional support,

not for the money.

I have to do this.

Hello, this is Baha.

I am officially tapping out.

Well, nights were too hard for me.

I have to get up roughly seven times a night

to stock up the fire.

It's not a winning situation for me right now,

and that's OK.

I realise more that money

is not what I need.

When we left Kyrgyzstan, we had nothing,

my wife and I and a one-year-old kid.

Then the second child was born,

and we had to move to Canada.

We had to start from zero again.

It was hard, but we did it.

And the winning of this competition

would have been a huge help to us,

but I can't.

I think it's because any other time,

I wasn't alone. I had my family.

I think-- I think that's why.

South Africa will always have a place in my heart

because being alone here felt like connecting

deeper with my family.

This experience, being alone, has led me to examine myself

and realise my values towards my wife, towards my kids,

towards my grandson, not just that they need me,

but also I need them.

Recognising this,

I don't need to be here anymore.

This realisation fills up a hole in me,

that little bit of a void that I have

of not feeling whole because of my past.

This is not the end. This is just a small chapter.

Not every chapter has to be happy.

Not every battle has to be won in the war.

Sometimes you have to lose a battle to win the war.

So this is buffalo thorn fruit.

I've been chewing them and spitting the pits out,

but I noticed the baboons were just chomping them.

And I've noticed the main component

of the baboon feces looks to be this buffalo thorn.

You'll see the broken pits in there.

I've been learning from the baboons.

Anyway, just something to keep my gut going.

Don't think I'm getting a lot of calories out of it, but...

You know, it's good to have something

moving through your system.

In this calorie game, my approach is,

every day when I wake up, I'm going to plan that day

based on my calorie needs for the next day.

My priority is around calories.

Today, I've just been watching my fish lines

keeping everything tuned.

It's been a dry spell on fishing.

I don't know how to explain it exactly,

but I am going to go hunting

and not work on the shelter today.

I'm not catching fish anymore,

and each day that I don't catch fish,

I worry that those days are going to keep adding up

to where I've gone too long.

So I'm making the decision to go hunt.

I think my best opportunity

is going to be to ambush one of these species,

meaning that I'm hidden behind a bush.

I'm just going to sit here

and wait and see if anything comes by.

Because approaching them is very difficult.

However-- I think all hunters know this--

sitting all day long in a blind

comes at a much greater cost mentally than walking all day.

But it uses less calories,

and it's going to be much more effective for this game,

so it's the strategy that I'm employing.

Porter was, like, such a genuine boy.

I was excited to take him hunting

'cause I like to hunt, and so when he was 10,

I took my bow, and he took his .22,

and we went out to the desert with the family,

and he shot a rabbit in the spine,

and it started to make this cry,

and I quickly ran over and dispatched the animal

as quickly as I could, and the rabbit

that he had shot was pregnant,

and it had six babies in it that were about to be born.

It was really shocking to Porter.

He looked at me, and he said,

"Dad, I don't think I want to be a hunter."

And my fantasy of having my son go hunting with me

and that being a hobby ended right there on that day.

But spending time in the wilderness

doing difficult things is a magic formula,

snaps us out of some of the things

we might be struggling with mentally.

It creates a new perspective, and I pivoted as a parent.

I respected him for his compassion.

Like, hunting isn't for everybody.

Some people are just really, really sensitive to that,

and that's a beautiful thing.

Nothing.

I am going back to camp,

and we're going to go night fishing.

Stumbling in the dark.

So I've hiked to the far side of the lagoon here,

and I've got a pole set up,

and so I'll let the pole fish while I use my hand line.

I can't believe it's been...

6 and 1/2 years.

I miss you.

Porter, he got in an accident when he was 11.

He fell and landed on his head and broke his skull.

That accident was so traumatic on his brain

that it affected him pretty significantly.

Some of the self-discipline aspects

of his personality weren't there anymore.

It was really, really difficult

navigating that with him, and later in life,

he experimented with some substances...

Struggled with that addiction,

and one night in the middle of the night,

we got a call just letting us know that our son

had died...

From a drug overdose.

And as a parent,

you question all of your decisions

and wonder if a different path

would have had a different outcome

as a form of torture.

Definitely loved him the entire time

and tried to make the right decisions

but didn't always know how.

One of the things that helps a little bit,

for me, is understanding that a life lived

is a beautiful thing, no matter how long it is.

So we treasure those memories in that time

that we had, even though it wasn't a really long time.

Today is Porter's day.

My thoughts are about him and his life,

and I'm enjoying taking the time to think

about one person for an entire day.

I'm not feeling lonely.

I'm feeling happy and connected,

and I feel like that can continue.

OK.

Let's check the pole.

Hm, interesting.

Oh, snag. Dang it.

Oh, no, not a snag.

Nice.

Super excited about this guy.

It's just what a hungry guy needs.

Well, that was a good day, caught a big fish,

thought a lot about Porter.

Awesome.

I hear geese.

So...

what I've decided is sit here,

conserve energy,

or sit where I might be able to shoot a goose.

We're winging it. We'll see what happens.

You never know.

They're all going to fly away now,

but then we're going to sit and see if they come back.

I might lose my arrow if I shoot.

Need to think about that too.

OK.

I didn't even see him.

I didn't even see him.

I'm getting frustrated.

Hunting is a lot of work.

I'm getting tired.

And I'm being unsuccessful every time.

I'm thinking I should have shot at those warthogs.

If I took another warthog,

I'd have food for another three weeks.

That's huge.

I definitely wouldn't have to be wasting energy

going hunting every single day.

But you can't dwell on the past.

OK, bird hunting is not my thing.

I'm over it.

We'll just go sit at our beach,

drink passion fruit daiquiris,

go catch some rooster fish.

Oh, wait, that's Costa Rica. Wrong continent.

No big deal.

Let me get into clean clothes and then take a break.

I can't do it. I have to go for a walk.

I'm going to go for a super slow walk.

If I sit around, I'm going to tap.

I'm losing it.

I just--

Not having a good day.

I'm hungry.

The little bit of jerky I have isn't doing anything.

I've never went a day without eating in my life.

I've always had some sort of food,

whether it's good food or bad food,

whether it's little,

whether it's just PB&J for a week.

It's food still.

I'm almost to the point where I can't pull my bow back.

And it just sucks to know that I'm at starvation time

where I just sit around, and I don't have anything to eat.

All the game here is not for me.

It's for 60 pound--

If could shoot a 60-pound animals,

I'd have a wildebeest in a second.

Those things are super dumb.

But it's hard,

and I have to go on these walks to mentally clear my head,

and it just wears me down, like, energy-wise.

You know, it burns calories that I don't have.

But I feel like if I don't do these walks...

I'm definitely quitting.

There's no way I'm going 80 days with no food.

There's no way.

If I can't pull my bow back, you know, I'm so screwed.

That's going to happen soon.

I've never had rapid weight loss,

but I can notice my pants getting looser.

It is a concern for me because

I'm one of the smaller participants.

I'm very worried that I will be pulled

for medical weight loss.

I'm not a big person.

I can't out starve anybody.

This is what happens.

It gets to you.

And I just got to let it out. I just got to get it out.

I don't have a friend to cry to.

I don't have anybody to call and vent to.

I'm going to hang in as long as I can.

I'm not going to tap.

I'm not going to do it.

Ah, OK.

Now that we had a pep talk, we'll be OK.

Let me put my jacket on. We'll head back.

Guys, I see something moving over here.

It's a giant tortoise.

It's a giant tortoise, you guys.

Hi.

You're OK.

Hi.

I know you're scared. Hi.

You guys, how cool is this?

I know. You're OK.

Oh, man.

You're OK.

I won't eat you as long as you don't bite my face off.

Animals can definitely change your mood from terrible

to being happy and positive.

It's like a little kid in a zoo

going and seeing the animals.

They get so excited to see the tigers

and the bears and the giraffes,

and I'm experiencing it every day in the wild.

Universe was like,

"Oh, bad day? Here's a tortoise."

I see these animals surviving out in the wild,

and I know I can be successful surviving

on what I can in the wild right next to them.

We'll leave you be. I gotta head home anyways.

If they can do it, I can do it too.

And it's giving me the positive mentality

to stay out here,

to push forward and keep going.

You guys, I was laying with a tortoise.

How freaking cool is that? That made my evening.

I needed this.

Now, I have a smile on my face.

You know, like,

it's the little things you got to find.

Just got to find them.

Thank you, universe.

It helped.

It's tough, man.

I'm off with my bow to see what's possible today.

I'm going to work on finishing the stonework.

The energy to make this shelter, I think,

will pay off over time.

. .

My legs still work, even though they're tired.

No freaking way. I see a warthog.

I'm still going to push to go as far as I can.