All language subtitles for Episode 14 - The Orchid Hunters

It's a no man's land. A complete
wilderness.

I was hunting really rare orchids.

Then things started to go wrong.

I'm looking down the barrel of a gun.

We're in trouble here.

This is a kidnap situation.

We want five million dollars.

That's when I realized we'd completely
lost control.

And they were shouting out, I will blow
their heads off.

We have to escape.

I was 23 years old.

I was backpacking into Central America.

It was a honeypot, I was told, for
orchids, my favourite family of flowers.

There's something about the orchid.

There's something about their erotic,
exotic flowers.

They're just orgasmic, basically.

When I first met Tom, he was going off
in lots of different Latin names which I

didn't understand.

At first I thought he was completely
barking.

I just thought, wow, he's very kind of
enthusiastic and full of life.

I thought, you know, if he's as mad as a
box of frogs, then he might be

interested in going backpacking with me.

Do you know a place called the Darien
Gap?

There's a highway that runs from the top
of North America all the way down to

the bottom of South America, but there's
only one gap in it, and that's the

Darien Gap.

Look, let me see my guidebook.

Out came the guidebooks, and I thought,
this place is bloody brilliant.

There was something mythical and magical
about it. It was a magnetic drawer.

I mean, it mentions orchids right away.
And they even mention orchids in the

guidebook.

And bang, I was in love with it.

Yeah, let's do it. I kind of went, let's
go.

I didn't realise that it would change my
life forever.

From Panama City, we planned to take a
bus to the last town on the Panamanian

Highway, which was Uviza.

Uviza is where the Pan American Highway
stops and the Darien Gap proper starts.

We got off the bus.

We were accosted by two military
personnel with big guns.

We didn't know what was going to happen
next.

Come with me.

They took her to the Panamanian army
base and we met the Comandante there.

The Comandante was sitting in a chair
with a revolver on a desk.

What are you doing here?

We told him that we were attempting to
cross the Darien Gap into Colombia.

And he said, you know, this place is
dangerous.

He kept repeating, muy peligroso, it's
very dangerous.

He said the civil war in Colombia was
still very intense.

There was a big drugs problem.

I thought we could just play the
innocent tourist. We're looking for

do us any harm?

He said you can cross, but we will take
no responsibility for that,

and people do get killed in this area in
recent years.

We weren't listening, no.

Very naive.

The next destination was the village of
Paya, which is the last village left

in the Darien Gap before you cross the
border into Colombia.

One of the biggest fears I had was
becoming lost and disorientated in the

jungle.

So I really wanted to find someone to
guide us and show us the way.

If we didn't get the guys in Paya, Paul
was adamant about it.

We were going back. End of story.

We are looking for guides to go to
Colombia.

He recommended two guides.

We met this guy called Carlos.

He said, we can take you to Colombia. I
can be your guide.

And he seemed genuine and friendly
enough.

And we agreed $50 a day, and it would
take roughly three or four days.

I'm going.

The whole thing had gathered a momentum
that almost became unstoppable.

We left Pyre, heading for Columbia, and
went straight into the primary

rainforest.

We ascended.

hundreds and hundreds of feet, almost
vertical, bang, into heaven to me.

The rainforest just surrounded us,
covered us.

As we went higher and higher, orchids
started to just cover the trees.

They were dripping from them. I began to
have a breakdown.

I couldn't control myself.

Suddenly, we saw this craft.

Really shook us that, actually. We
thought, what's that for? Is it a body?

is it?

We took that as someone who had a nasty
end.

We should have said, look, let's stop
this. Let's go. Let's get back.

But neither of us had the courage to say
that to the other.

After a couple of days of walking in the
rainforest, we were right in this no

-man's land.

We're in this very dangerous area now.

This is it.

We walked into this funny clearing, as
if it was like a trap or something. It

was very strange.

And it was weird what happened next.

It was a huge commotion.

We just fell to the floor.

There was...

A guy in front of me shouting.

I didn't understand him very well, but I
knew what he was saying.

Just hands on your head.

God, this is it. They're going to just
take what they want.

And then shoot us.

Paul was like a ghost. I looked across
to see him.

Just staring ahead of him.

These two blokes were...

Seriously, aggressive.

We, of course, were absolutely frozen.

You know, I'm looking down the barrel of
gun.

And behind that barrel, an angry,
aggressive stranger.

And it was all over in a flash.

Absolutely kind of boom, boom, boom.

Gone.

We marched to our feet very aggressively
and marched back the way we had come.

We could just see our guide being taken
away.

We don't know to this day exactly what
happened to the guide, but that's the

last time that we ever saw them.

That's when I realised really properly
that we'd completely

lost control.

They took us to a dilapidated camp.

There was some kind of lean -to.

They said, this is where you'll stay.

We actually thought, no, we really are
in trouble here.

This is a kidnap situation.

We made a series of errors of judgement.

We should have... Turn back.

But we didn't.

One of the most powerful feelings I had
was one of guilt.

In a way, it was my idea to cross the
Darien Gap.

I mean, he was enthusiastic and really
kind of, come on, let's do it.

But still, it was kind of, maybe it was
me who planted the seed in his brain for

doing it.

that guilt feeling. It was magnified.

Your parents, the people you loved, your
family and friends, you're thinking,

what a stupid thing to have done. And if
we die here, they'll never find us and

they'll never know what happened to us.

It's not just me having adventure.

I'm involving... Yeah, I was involving
people that I love in

a situation that was just...

A series of arrows of judgment.

Two days later, we're interrogated by
the commandante, the guy that we called

Mr. Smith.

He got his notepad out and just went
through our names, addresses, what our

occupations were.

So I said, I'm a gardener.

And what about Paul?

He asked me, what do you do?

Tom, I work in a bank.

And he said, well, I work in a bank,
Tom.

Bunker.

And he put...

any underlying bank hope.

Ka -ching.

I said it, but then I thought, why did I
admit that?

We shouldn't have said that.

Anything but bank.

Anything.

Now the atmosphere had changed.

Felt there must have been something
brewing.

Mr. Smith.

Tom. Came along and said, I want a word
with you, Tom. Right now. Go.

Come over to the top of the camp.

I was shaking away, trying to stay
focused, not knowing what the hell he

going to say.

You want to go home and see all your
family and friends?

Well, yeah. Yeah, well, of course, you
know.

And he said... We want $3 million for
freedom.

$3 million.

Inside you're thinking, holy smoke, $3
million isn't just going to appear.

It's not going to happen.

And he said, in blunter terms as
possible...

Paul will stay here.

Paul stays here.

And you go home and get the money for
me.

Didn't expect that at all.

You have two weeks.

I was completely confused.

Your freedom is there.

You could go.

That's it. The whole situation is over.
You could be free, but Paul won't be.

He'll be still here.

What did he want?

They want me to go home and get $3
million in cash.

Tom will collect the money from friends
and family, come back to the

jungle.

and then hand over the cash and I'm free
to go.

The hairs on the back of my neck rose
up.

I thought, well, I'm going to be left
behind, aren't I?

And I felt, you know, isolated by that.

I'm poor in concrete terms. There was no
dictation.

Tom, it's not going to happen.

Whoever stayed here is dead.

The person who stays here is going to
die. End of story.

You've got to go back.

You've got to tell him no.

As he started to talk through more
clearly his reasoning, it was absolutely

right.

We agreed.

We're in it together.

We're going to get out of it together.

We'll take them all on.

But, bloody hell, you know, I was
absolutely petrified.

Not going to happen, your plan.

We haven't got three million dollars,
we're staying here.

We are staying here together, and that's
the end of it. We're not, well, one

person's not going home or leaving.

But they were starting to get annoyed.

You will stay in these woods forever.

That, to me, was... They're going to
shoot us.

It had been, you know, three or so weeks
now.

I thought, we're in trouble here,
because when they realise that their

gone wrong, they're only going to blame
us and just shoot us for that reason.

So we were trying to find ways to
humanise them, to try and get a good,

reaction from them.

But one particularly key moment was with
Mr Smith. We tried to invite him to

play cards.

Begging my neighbour?

We played a game called Beggar My
Neighbour.

At the end of the game, the person with
all the cards is the winner.

It's a game of complete chance.

Once the cards are dealt, there's no
skill to it.

For the first ten minutes, me and Paul
were winning everything in sight.

We held all the cards, we had all the
big strong jacks.

We had the queens, the kings and the
aces.

I looked at Mr Smith.

He was really pretty annoyed at this
stage.

Come on, steal again.

It was a very dodgy situation to be in.

There were guns strapped to the side of
the table.

He had a revolver in his pocket.

There were guns everywhere.

But whatever combination of cards we put
down, they lost all the time.

Mr Smith was standing up and he was
looking around with a love face he was

losing here.

We flashed a little bit of eye contact,
but it was quite clear that we were

both, like, absolutely kind of bricking
it, really nervous.

We were sort of thinking, you know,
we're going to get shot here for winning

this game of cards.

Deal again.

No, no, deal again.

This is the last chance we've got to get
him to win.

So I was kind of deliberately kind of
shuffling my card to try and make sure

that I was going to be a loser.

There's a pause.

He had almost won.

And I played my card.

Finally, he'd won.

I win.

That was a clear -cut moment when we
thought, No more kind of playing card

games. It's too dangerous.

Okay, it's over.

Get out.

Go back to the hut.

They clearly had complete control and
complete power on the situation.

The big boss arrived six weeks exactly
into our ordeal.

He was considered to be the general, the
highest commandante of the group, and

he was coming to sort the whole thing
out.

The minute he turned up, we knew he was
Trouble.

We just knew it, and we named him
Trouble Ahead.

It was an apt name.

Who is this?

Then a few minutes said, Thomas, to the
top of the camp.

Sit over there.

He had this presence about him. He was
serious.

I literally was going to pee my pants.

We want $5 million for your freedom.

I thought it's gone up.

Each?

Each.

Ten million dollars.

We haven't got anything.

The lungs just deflated.

I thought, we're never going to leave.

And I had just that despair when he said
that.

They now want five million each.

We were now worth ten million dollars.

They're going to kill us if they don't
get us.

That's when it sunk in.

Let's get the hell out of here.

Paul was like, my feeling is that
they're not going to really...

do anything but shoot us. We've got to
make our own luck here.

Gotta find some way to escape.

The biggest problem we faced was
surviving in the jungle for the number

it required for us to get out.

We needed things.

Like food.

Anytime sort of sharp objects, even a
section of a machete, something to cut

your way through the jungle.

And if we could do that and choose the
right moment, then we would go.

Opposite where we were in the tent was
an open palm house with a table in the

middle where they store a lot of the
provisions for cooking.

I started to go into the habit of going
in there with my guidebook and sitting

on it, and then my towel would go down.

I'd better pick up a bag of rice in the
towel.

Yeah, I became a kleptomaniac.

Paul was a class act. He should be a
professional thief.

Broad daylight with everybody there.

It was class.

It was glass.

So over kind of a week, I was able to
steal like six bags of rice.

And Tom had found a bit of mirror.

And the end of the machete.

That's brilliant. That's a really useful
tool.

It's almost an adrenaline run.

We just were cleaning them out.

After just a few days, we collected what
we needed to.

The lighter, the broken bit of machete,
enough food to run away.

We had these little, we called them
escape pods with us, which were our

modifiers, little rucksacks that we had.

We had everything in place.

There was a chance that we could do
this.

But then things started to really go
wrong.

I became very ill for a couple of days.

This fever kicked in very quickly in the
morning, and by the afternoon I could

barely walk.

I'm going to try and clean them a bit,
OK? Just gently, though, yeah?

Tom started to get... boils and sifts
appearing on his leg.

This was a proper problem.

Walking and the ability to walk was
utterly vital in an attempt to escape.

The leg was starting to swell up with
these volcanic little eruptions.

Then he started feeling.

something wriggling around in his flesh.

Paul said, look, we don't know what it
is, but we've got to speak to Mr Smith.

Do you know what it is?

It's a... It's like a laid egg. It was a

worm that kind of dug into you and
started eating you from the inside out.

He laid me down on a bench. They put a
bit of a leaf in my mouth. Just grit

on that.

They were smoking cigarettes and then
taking the smoke and putting it up

the leg and blowing the nicotine onto
the wound.

And the minute he put the nicotine on
top of each of the wounds, he said, he's

sleeping, and they come up, and then
we'll get them out, producing this

razor in his hand. I thought, this is
going to be messy.

Yeah.

I just think that's not a good idea. He
turned the blade to open the

wound.

He got these big thumbs out and he went
right, he just shot his finger to the

side and then the pain came through.

And up came the worm.

White maggots, basically.

After the operation, it was painful to
walk.

No possibility of escaping.

We got very disheartened about the whole
thing.

Just as the healing process was taking
place, they came in and told us we were

going to start walking again.

It was a forced march that we went on.

Day in, day out.

Look!

We were going into seriously.

Hardcore territory.

Very, very hard.

The humidity, the heat.

I was baking hot.

I mean, you could fry an egg on my
floor.

Loss of sense of balance.

They were very dizzy and hazy. The
vision was starting to go, but you were

prodded on by a gun to go faster.

It was just too much for me in the end.

Tom.

I came to in the worst camp ever, ever.

In this camp, the atmosphere was...

Definitely much more aggressive.

The lady we nicknamed The Beat.

She came up and said, You will dance
now, you.

So I started to awkwardly dance.

Dance all time.

She might sort of put a trigger and be a
bit... trigger happen, accidentally

shoot as well.

Oh,

safety off. Oh, no. Bullet in the head.

They were angry with us.

You know, they'd come up with this idea
that they were going to get some money

for us and it wasn't happening the way
they thought it might happen.

And they were literally just shouting
out, you know, I will blow their heads

off.

And then they'd just give me a really
hard, long stare and just draw their

finger across their throat.

And I thought, they're just going to
kill us.

Just for no reason, just to get rid of
us.

The throat drops into your stomach.

Absolute kind of terror, this is the
end, that's it. It's going to be lights

out.

It was getting really twisted stuff and
we thought we have to escape.

There was fear.

If we were found breaking out, they'd
come after you then, wouldn't they?

With a vengeance.

We were very nervous and wary about it.

So that's when we started to write the
will.

In case we get split up, we should write
a note home to our parents.

So we agreed to swap the wills so that
at least if I was to die in the woods,

they'd at least see my will that I'd
left with Paul.

Dear Mum, Dad, things aren't looking too
good.

Love you lots. Hope everything's going
well at home.

Really sorry about the situation that
we're in.

Dear Mum and Dad, you know, if this gets
to you, that's because Tom has got out

and gives Tom, like, a good welcome.

No, he's proved his friendship in
incredibly difficult circumstances.

And we said, we go now.

It was that moment.

Two pods were ready to go.

We thought, if we don't go now, we're
going to die.

The biggest problem we faced then was
how do we get out of the tent without

being seen?

So we thought the only way out of the
tent was out the back.

We got a bit of a broken bit of mirror.

I started just to etch the cut in the
back of the tent.

Plastic was easier to cut, but the noise
it made, it made this

kind of rasping sound.

And I thought, oh God, are you sure to
hear that?

He's only 10 yards away.

I thought, once they realised that we
had this kind of idea to escape,

They were going to shoot us.

We

needed

some sort of cover.

We heard some thunder in the distance.

We thought, well, that's brilliant. If
it comes this way, that noise of that

thunder, the noise of the rain, it means
he wouldn't hear a thing. And then we

could sneak out the back and be off.

And we were thinking, right, it's got to
rain, it's got to rain.

A storm was coming. We could hear it. We
thought, this is it.

Hearts were just coming out of our
chest. The ribs were cracked from the...

excitement of it.

When the thunder and lightning was that
close, it was going to rain.

It was guaranteed. It was never going to
fail.

It

didn't

rain.

For the first time ever, I think, in the
whole nine months, it never came.

First thing in the morning, these two
messengers arrived.

And they went over to whisper to the
commandante in charge.

And the reaction was instant.

I mean, he was just furious.

He was just mad.

We thought they may have seen us or had
a hint of us trying to escape.

And me and Paul were like, you know,
holy crap, we are really in trouble

I thought, these guys are serious and
they're going to

shoot us.

He looked at us and I thought, we're
going to die now.

He said, totally out of the blue.

Get your stuff up.

You're going home.

That's a disbelief.

And we thought, well, is this really
happening?

It can't be.

Why are they just giving up?

somewhere, thought, just let these guys
go. Just get rid of them.

Why he did it, I'll never know.

They pointed down the path and said to
leave and follow that path.

Kind of around the 12th of December.

And they shook us by the hand. They
wished us Merry Christmas.

Happy Christmas, you two.

If you come back, we'll blow your heads
off.

Is this really happening?

But we really were off and gone.

And we never looked back.

We're home for Christmas. We're going to
be eating turkey in a couple of days.

I mean, it was just before Christmas.

And then we came to this tea junction.

Which way do you think we should go?

Left or right?

Go straight on or go up there.

We have to make a decision now.

I don't know. Your call.

So I said, well, why don't we go left?

Yeah.

So we turned left.

The rain began to belt. It was
absolutely torrential.

It was like something out of a murky
Florida swamp.

And the path was just impenetrable.

We waited for just hours and hours.

We just kept going round in circles and
getting lost, not knowing where we were

going.

We were both thinking, we're going to
die, not because of a gun, we're going

die because the jungle's going to kill
us.

After three or four days, we'd eaten all
the food, it'd all gone.

The bodies were starting to go.

Trench rock was kicking in.

It was just a nightmare.

Paul turned to me and said, we're
struggling here, Tom.

Tom, this isn't working.

We've got no idea where we are.

I suggested to Tom that we go back to
the guerrilla camp.

and asked them to make it clearer about
what we exactly needed to do

to get out.

It was kind of one of the few moments
during those nine months

that things got a bit heated and kind of
voices were raised.

I didn't want to do it. I just thought,
well, we're going to end up in trouble

here. I think we should carry on.

We were nearly out of here.

Freedom was just at the end of our
fingertips.

Look, we've got to go back.

I said, look, shut up.

Let's get over and done with.

We went back up the hill we went.

We walked for...

two days and then made a very demanding
ascent to the camp

and

out came one of the foot soldiers

he looked at it in absolute horror

And I thought, if anyone you want to
see, it's not him.

I was petrified.

Was he going to shoot us?

What have you been doing for

the last five days?

Or he said, oh, we just got lost.

And that eased the tension.

They thought we were rubbish and, yeah,
we were rubbish.

And they kind of laughed at us.

It's those two gringos who just are
clueless, basically.

They laughed it off of me and said, you
must turn right.

And we said, oh, yeah, we know the
mistake we've made. Stupid tourists,

all idiots.

Thank you.

And we romped.

We romped.

We

just

walked and walked until we got to where
the National Park headquarters are.

They had a radio and they radioed the
embassy.

genuinely just didn't think he could
believe that we were there in front of

The next day, a Red Cross speedboat came
to pick us up.

The floodgates were released and there
it is, whoosh, out it comes.

Sheer and utter joy at somehow having
got through it.

Lucky to be alive.

A hundred times over in big, red, bold
capital letters, lucky to be alive.

Oh, goes without saying, because we
should be dead.

There were low times, there were
terrifying times.

But we always believed and we had the
confidence that we would one day get

to England and see our families.

Mum told me about the vigil they'd had
for me, all the candles lit in the

at home.

When you started to hear these stories,
it made you realise how stupid we were

for doing it, but how amazing it was to
get out.

the lengths that my parents had gone to
to try and find out what had happened to

me.

Very brave and very good people.

And I'd put them through things that
they didn't deserve to go through.

Brand new Banged Up Abroad is back next
Wednesday at 9 straight after Scam City.

Stay tuned for a Doomsday Preppers
premiere.