I Almost Died on A Discovery Channel Survival Show-Out Of The Wild Venezuela

The southern frontier of Venezuela. A mysterious and unforgiving land of rivers, waterfalls, and towering mountains. It's story time and today I'm going to talk about that one time I almost starved to death in the jungles of Venezuela. Here nine ordinary people leave their lives behind to embark on a personal quest that will change their lives forever. They are stranded in the middle of nowhere with one task. Get out alive. All right guys the goal today is not to die. So I had been on a lot of pretty tough adventures before being on this show. I had ridden my bike from Honduras to Colorado. 4,000 miles through mountains and deserts and jungles. Multiple marathons and some things that I thought were pretty difficult but nothing in my life has ever been as difficult as Out of the Wild Venezuela. They experience life in its rawest form and come face to face with personal limits, hunger, exhaustion, and self-doubt. That show pushed me to the absolute edge of everything I thought that was possible both mentally and physically. And I learned firsthand how much starvation really sucks. Here lay down. Take a breather. Physical exertion, hunger, dehydration, and lack of sleep can cause the body to break down and even collapse. So here's the premise of the show. The goal was to get out of the wild so they dropped nine strangers on top of a mountain in Venezuela called Mount Roraima. It's a very sacred place. It's called a tipuiz. These beautiful flat top mountains that just rise above the earth and actually they were the inspiration for the Disney movie Up. So at this point we know that we're going to be traversing through the jungles of Venezuela, building our own shelters, finding our own food, and every few days the producers give us a map and we have to navigate ourselves to different campsites. We had all watched the season before where they did this in Alaska and it looked very difficult. We knew that we were not just going to go on some fun little camping trip documented by the Discovery Channel. Oh yeah, this is a Discovery Channel show. So at any time during this adventure there are cameras and producers and people all around us. It might look that we're out there on our own but there are an army of people documenting our every move. I've never done anything like this where I'm completely living off the land. This is the adventure at its purest form. We start off on this mountain and they give us some very basic supplies. We had a couple machetes, a couple pots and pans, some very uncomfortable backpacks, a totally worthless bow and arrow, some fishing lines, some fishing hooks, and that's about it. We did not have tents or sleeping bags or sleeping pads. We knew that when we would be camping we'd be camping on the ground and in the mud. Oh here's the machete. This is a must-have item. We only had the basics and then we would have to be building our own shelters. Now did any of us have experience doing that? Kind of. Before the show started we had a three-day training where they taught us some basic elements of how to build shelters using the local plants and trees to build something that would protect us from the rain. Coming up on day three the group finally makes camp number two only to be met with the worst conditions yet. Here's a big detail about this show. Unlike other reality programs there is no reward, there is no money, there is nothing at the end of the line. A lot of reality shows like Survivor or Amazing Race, shows like that, you're competing for something. Not this one. This was just an experiment to see how far humans could push themselves. This is the edge of the earth right here. So here I am, Mr. Positive, Ryan Van Duserk, thrown into the jungles of Venezuela with eight other strangers. What am I doing here? Because I had zero survival skills. The others on the team had some experience hunting, big time experience. Nick was in the army, Tara was a park ranger, Michael, Sam, and Brad were all avid hunters. So they really brought something useful to the table. What did I bring? A good attitude. I don't know, that's kind of how I looked at it. Okay, I don't have these skills, but I'm going to try to do my best to fill in the holes in other ways by being enthusiastic and a strong team member and just happy-go-lucky guy like I always am, right? All right team, let's do it. We got this. Love you guys. Ryan doesn't have a lot of traditional outdoor skill sets. What Ryan brings to the table, he's a big time motivating factor for us. You guys doing awesome. You guys doing awesome. And I think that's fantastic. He's definitely valuable to this. You don't have to be drill back woodsman to be a value to this group. That's why it takes a team to get this done. Looking good, guys. I'll give you a little kiss every day. That's all better. Into the jungle. Today we're gonna make it to camp. All right guys, we're getting all the way to camp Here is maybe the most important aspect of the show that was the biggest hook. Like I said, there was no prize money, no reward. The one thing that gave it the game aspect was that we all had these orange GPS beacons on our belts and this was our lifeline. If there was any time during the adventure where we had just had enough, we were suffering too much, we could push a button on this GPS and a helicopter would come and take us out. Now of course, none of us, being the badasses that we thought we were, would ever consider quitting and pushing that button. In our casting videos leading up to this adventure, we were all like, I've been through this and this and this and I've never quit. There's no way I'm gonna quit in the jungle. You know, Nick's an army guy. Everybody has done some really tough stuff before. We're not gonna quit and we're especially not gonna quit on national television. But as you'll see, this adventure starts picking people off pretty quickly. Coming up, the first team member quits halfway through the day's trek. It's hard to watch one person go. I'm not a failure. I don't quit and today's the first day where I actually considered pushing that button. We're moving way slower than we thought we would. Probably way slower than the producers thought we would. So we're not getting to the camps they had planned for us. So we're just sleeping out in the middle of fields, getting rained on. Remember, no tents. So we're sleeping in mud puddles and the bugs were horrible. They're biting us like crazy. There's these little nasty bugs called putty putties and they're like sand flies and they are just all over our bodies at all times and we have nothing to protect ourselves with. We're starving and tired, dehydrated. It's making us clumsy. We've been out of water for more than an hour. Everybody is cashed out. We're finding a little bit of food but not much. We catch some fish and when I say fish, I mean like fish the size of minnows, the little anchovies you get on pizza. Try sharing a handful of tiny fish with nine people. It just doesn't work. And the big meal of the day is another major disappointment. Grasshopper fish stew. It looks like something that the British Navy would eat. It was gross man. I mean it was just freaking gnarly. I thought there'd be a lot more food in the jungle but we're having a hard time finding anything that's edible and the stuff we do find is disgusting and not very calorie rich. You guys are insane. I'm thinking oh crazy wasp grub. It'll explode in your mouth but it tastes great. I'm telling you it'll taste great. Try it. It's raining so much that our shelters aren't really protecting us and we're not staying warm so we're shivering all night long and not getting much sleep. The team is caught in the open. This is torture man. And what happens when humans don't eat or sleep? We get cranky and some of the tempers started to flare. I didn't sleep again. So whether or not you went to the forest and gathered wood doesn't mean that I wasn't up all night again keeping the fire away. I built this so I could hang the handle. You didn't build anything. Think about how cranky and hangry you might get after missing lunch let's say. One meal a day. Try missing all of your meals and barely getting any sleep. And add on the fact that there are cameras in your face at all times. It's a little bit stressful and so sometimes people got a little a little testy. Let's do a no Michael Sam interaction from now on. I get this question a lot because people are very curious and they ask me what did the camera guys eat? Well the camera guys were doing a job so they had to be eating three meals a day. You can't carry these giant cameras and be starving right along with the participants. But they never ate anywhere near us out of respect. But there was one time we were all standing around they were filming something and Melissa noticed a pack of Oreos on the ground and we're all like oh we got so excited and we thought that we could kind of like shift them to the side and nobody would notice and then grab them when the camera guys walked off. Unfortunately they caught us and we didn't get those Oreos and man those Oreos would have provided us a serious boost. This area is riddled with poisonous snakes plants and insects. Wear high rubber boots at all time. After about four or five days we start to get the hang about how this whole thing works. Remember this is a tv show this is new to all of us. So every few days we get a piece of a map we navigate to a camp we stay at those camps for two or three nights at the camps we try to build shelter and this is when they pull us off for our long interviews and they ask us about everything that's happening and what do you think about Michael and you know Sam fighting and what do you think you're gonna do if you don't find food and blah blah blah they're trying to build up the drama remember this is a tv show. The group hits rock bottom. We're beat up tired hungry we didn't eat anything. The first person to push the button is sweet Carolina and this is sad for us all because we've become friends and we've become very fast friends but Carolina was suffering from day one. I think three or four days in she had a bout of hypothermia we all stripped off our clothes and did the whole thing where we we hug her as hard as we can to give her some body heat. Hypothermia occurs when the body loses heat faster than it can produce it okay causing the body's vital functions such as the heart and respiratory system to fail. So she's had some horrible blisters and that's essentially what took her out she just couldn't walk anymore. I'm a city girl so eight days without eating and hiking like four miles with just three wasps in my stomach as my only meal that's a huge accomplishment for me. I really started to struggle about seven or eight days into this adventure the lack of calories was really breaking me down and my body at this point is like a furnace I'm just burning through everything. I had spent the previous two months riding my bicycle 3,000 miles from Vancouver all the way down to Cabo San Lucas and I was used to eating thousands of calories a day and burning those calories and all of a sudden here I am in the jungle barely eating anything but my body is still burning those calories. If I could go back and do this again I would come into the adventure a little bit soft and a little bit heavy so I had some reserves to feed off of. I am lagging like I've never lagged before I'm just slopping around super clumsy I feel like I'm drunk you know I'm an endurance runner physically I should be able to do this and that's what's so hard. We're in a state of catabolism you know where bodies are eating themselves it's called ketosis when your body is burning your fat reserves it doesn't feel good it's not good for your liver. Every time we stand up it just goes kind of black and we're gonna make sure we stand up really slow. The next person to push the button was surprisingly Tara. I thought this girl was gonna make it to the end no problem she is a tough girl but the starvation really got to her she lost a lot of weight and she lost it quickly and I mean it's hard to explain how bad starvation sucks but you just have to believe me it affects everything your mind and your body and just little things like walking 10 feet become an ordeal it's just you feel just like worthless and you start to feel depressed in your mind you're like why am I not strong why can I not do this these are very easy things that I normally can do no problem but when you don't have food day after day after day it starts to beat you down. I would definitely miss the wonders of this landscape out here I believe in a greater creator of all this we're just tiny little specks on this planet we're just little tiny creatures and I mean all of this creation and us being here and I have a whole lot of respect for those people that survive on the land because it is not easy. The day after Tara left Rob pushed the button and we started to think well this is getting out of hand we've already lost three people and we're not even two weeks into the adventure and this is when the rest of us really have to start digging deep this is where survival turns into a mind game and I feel that if your mind stays positive your mind stays balanced you can get through anything in life our bodies had all broken down we were all surviving it's not like one person was eating more than another person and had an advantage we were all suffering in the same way and now the rest of us are coming together as a pretty tight group because we have to only we can understand each other we know we don't have to tell each other what we're going through we feel it and we look at each other for source of energy and source of support to get us to the next phase because one minute I may be down the next minute Ryan may be down next minute Melissa may be down and it takes yet another team member to step up and in the end of this we'll probably be closer than we'll ever imagine I think one of the hardest things about this adventure besides the starvation was that we did not know when it was going to end when I do adventures now I know that the finish line is 20 or 30 miles away or I'm going to be home in an x amount of days every single day we woke up okay here we go again and day after day after day of not knowing really wears on you and it's like god and then we start getting pissed off at the producers and the camera guys because they're always in our faces how do you feel Ryan you know I feel I feel horrible that's how I feel when is this going to be over and they would say well you chose to be here you could leave whenever you want and that would get you kind of fired up because you're like I'm not quitting I'm not another thing the producers would do and this is reality tv for you but they would try to build up stories that aren't really there when we would all sleep together Melissa and I a lot of times would kind of cuddle up to stay warm and they would be like Ryan what's going on with you and Melissa you seem very close and I'd be like you know what we're close because we're starving and we're cold that's why we're close I did not have one sexual thought for 30 days out there not a chance I was wasting any energy on that you know what I dreamed about I dreamed about food all the time I dreamed about chocolate chip pancakes and nutter butters and ice cream and foods that I never really eat in my real life but I was just so starving for something rich and tasty we've not had dinner in three nights fry up those grubs boy wow I can feel the weight in that pan looking at a grub it looks disgusting I mean they're giant maggots that move like caterpillars I can't believe we're like drilling over a pot but you stick these suckers in a frying pan and heat them up and they taste like creamed corn you pop them in your mouth and they just explode with flavor there are many days also where we don't eat anything we put nothing into our bodies and remember we're burning 5000 plus calories a day we are losing weight quickly and our bodies just aren't working like they should and our brains aren't working very well for that matter we are not very sharp I remember a time when I was trying to tie a knot something I've done a million times and I just couldn't get it I was like fumbling around I felt I felt drunk a lot of days I really felt like I was drunk I was so out of it I would stand up and get these crazy head rushes and be like whoa where am I where am I and then everything would kind of come together and then all right yeah I'm in the jungle being filmed by the Discovery Channel how did this happen hey guys Sammy so Sam tells us I can't do this I have to go home it was just like oh a dark cloud came over everybody we couldn't believe it we know it's a very tough moment for him and for the team seems like every person that leaves just gets harder and harder I'm glad to know you man it's good to know you damn it Sammy yeah I know this experience has been both a success and a failure for me it is accomplished far more than I could have imagined but it's been a failure because I would have really really liked to be able to see it through to the end a few days after Sam left I hit my lowest point of the trip I earlier in the day had completely fainted blacked out fell over I had never had this happen to me in my life before and I kind of came to and I was like whoa like my body is suffering in a way that it's never suffered before did I just fall down yeah I just fell when I turned around like I saw Ryan get up and I saw him stumble and I ran over there and he just looked like he had no idea where he was he was super confused super scared and that really scared me to see him like that and I started to think Ryan why are you here this is becoming dangerous this is bad for you this is unhealthy this might have lasting consequences on your body and I sat in a rainstorm just getting drenched going over in my mind should I stay should I stay should I not should I and everything in me wanted to leave I knew if I hit that button I would be out of there and back in a hotel eating food within a matter of hours and that thought was so tempting I grabbed their hands out of support and out of love at that moment I think of my mom she is my hero everything I do in life I do to make her proud all I could think about is just just hugging her and saying mom I tried my hardest but I couldn't do it I was going to push the button I was out I had justified it to myself I had put in a great effort way to go Ryan but then something happened and this is the only time in my life where I feel like outside forces played a role in my destiny and all of a sudden we hear Nick and Brad screaming from across this river and earlier in the day it wasn't a river it was a little trickle but because of all the rain it turned into a flash flood and they were stuck on the other side so immediately I snapped out of my pity party and we all came together to help Brad and Nick get back across the river hey Nick don't go yet man it's not safe let me get the rope man they are hungry wet and cold and night is approaching if they can't get back to their warm clothes and fire they will become hypodermic and you know what it did is it pulled me out of just thinking about myself and my own suffering and brought me back into the group dynamic and it was like Ryan you can't leave because you still need to be here to help your friends out I missed you too man and after that moment I think our group really really bonded like never before these are the kind of moments that that I'm here for we're here as a team we're here together and uh it's one of the most magical moments I've had on the journey so far we're still all together you guys saved me as well you don't even know I'll tell you later so how did we finally get out of the wild oh this is the whole point of the show to get us out to be triumphant if you don't want to know you can stop watching right now I'll put a link in the description to the whole series it's free on the Discovery Channel website but if you want to keep watching I'm going to tell you the end of the show so we got some pieces of a boat together we found an old canoe and some other pieces and bamboo and we built this ragtag piece of junk raft that barely floated but it got us down this river Nick and Ryan have lost control in the rapids and then we kind of take a turn and we can see to the left side is that 50 foot waterfall it's not a good sound and it just kind of flashed in front of me like Ryan this is not a game anymore if I go over this waterfall I'm gonna die but don't worry we didn't die and then one morning as we're floating down the river we see humans and we have not seen humans for a long time and there are some local native Pomona Indians and they're waving at us I start yelling out Spanish to them and obviously they don't speak English and actually their first language isn't even Spanish but they understand Spanish so I start talking to them in Spanish asking them like where do we go how do we get out of here she kind of gestures that we kind of go with them that they will put us in their boat beautiful I just wanted to hug her right away oh my god it's the most powerful moment I've ever had with somebody I don't even know I'm quite proud with the way I was able to perform mentally you're thinking it's all you know hack and slash your way through the wilderness test yourself against the savageness of the wild you know it's not that at all it's something totally different it's a voyage of self-discovery coming up a road the group finds a road on that road we start hitchhiking and I really love hitchhiking in Latin America I lived in Honduras for two years and I hitchhiked all over the place so this finally you know I'm not a good survivalist I'm not a good hunter or a fisher this was the one thing that I could do well on this show to help our team out and that was hitchhiking and now we feel like we're done like this show is over this truck's going to drive us to a town yay the show is over oh we can finally breathe easily the best day ever man the best day ever and as the truck is pulling into the town and I still get emotional when I think about this moment I can see off in the distance this person with gray hair my mom's here my mom's here really I jump off that truck as fast as I can and the first time in 26 days I've run I have energy to run and I give her the biggest hug I've ever given her in my life and now at this moment I'm reflecting on the 26 days I've been here and how many times I've been close to pushing that button and if I had pushed that button I wouldn't be here to experience this moment and how many times I dug deeper than I've ever dug in my entire life and channeled my mother's energy it's such an amazing feeling that I've never had before and it's not just I'm having the other four people are having this feeling as well we did it as a team and I think that's why it's even more powerful Venezuela five we made it out of the wild that night we are so excited to eat food but our stomachs are so messed up that we really can't eat like we want to when you don't eat for a long time your stomach shrinks and you really just can't handle food so we ate a lot of fruits and watermelons and we tried to eat like tasty savory stuff but it just didn't go down well and later that night in my hotel my mom took a photo of me and looking at that photo now is scary I lost about 35 pounds we all did we all lost a ton of weight I look like a refugee so here I am nine years later and I am so grateful that I have a belly full of burritos right now and I'll never have to go through anything like that again am I happy that I did it I sure am in the moment the experience was absolute torture looking back on it I find it to be very valuable I tap into those experiences all the time in my everyday life now whether I'm just dealing with something hard with work or on a hundred mile race I tap into that and know that I can get through anything my personal goal in coming out here was to grow more as a person connect more with nature we lived out here 26 days off of mother nature with no help from anything else and I think we as humans have to realize that we need to live closer to mother nature and try to have less of a negative impact and I think that's a very important lesson the world is fragile and we really need to respect it this experience as difficult as it was really makes me thankful 10 times more thankful than I ever was before for everything that I have in this modern life I have a refrigerator full of food at most times when I hit a light switch guess what the light goes on I have running water in my house these are all amazing things and these are all things that were a huge ordeal when we were in the jungle when we were hungry we had to find food and sometimes it took an entire day to get five little fish you know they make you bleed and so you want to make sure you bite them before they get to your tongue it's the food that bites back man a lot of people don't choose to go on these adventures to challenge themselves I am so fortunate that I got to take a month off and go do this a lot of people on this planet are born into suffering they don't know when their next meal is coming they don't know if the the rainstorm is going to just flood out their house so this show really filled me with a lot of compassion and has motivated a lot of the work that I do today do I still hang out with these people absolutely when possible we all live pretty far away from one another but what we went through in that jungle bonded us like a band of brothers and sisters and we will forever be connected I've hung out with Tara many times here in Boulder we've even gone to Burning Man together I have gone to the upper peninsula of Michigan to track down the elusive Brad to go to his wedding and got to meet his awesome family Nick and I rode our bicycles across the country in 2011 and we stopped into New Orleans and visited with Sam I've hung out with Melissa many times I've been in New York City with Carolina I have yet to hang out with Michael he's a bit of a recluse hanging out up there in Maine looking for Bigfoot but I have so much love for everybody that was part of the show we all get emotional Brad Melissa and I just start crying full-on crying tears buddy thank you all so much for watching this very long video I hope you found it interesting and I'm sure you're going to have a ton of questions because everybody always does so you can write them down in the comments below and I will try to get to them also if you want to watch the show I will link that below and if you are new to my channel please like and subscribe I have all sorts of adventure videos from around the world they are uplifting and fun and insightful and I promise you that you're going to want to get off your couch and get out there after watching some of my stuff we have a pretty good time out here at Doozer TV so thank you all so much have a great day and we'll see you down the road