by Ed Stafford
Necessity saw me lying in the sand and kicked me hard in the stomach. I had no option but to continue trying. I had to drink. I moved slowly down the beach and tried two more trees. From the last tree I got a single green coconut down but it had nothing in it. Letting the pole rest on the sand, I used it to help me to continue to stand. Desperation had levels that I’d previously not known about.
But nothing lasts for ever. My final tree was lower than the ones that I’d been trying and I didn’t have to stretch as high to thrust the pole upwards into the nest of green eggs. Pop, one fell down, then another, then a third. Finally, I broke into some healthy full fruits and drank the sweet fluid as if it were life energy itself, liquid love, flooding into my dying body.
But my eventual reward was tinged with dread as I knew that these were the last coconuts that I could get on my side of the island. The pole was at my limit in terms of weight that I could lift – I couldn’t make a longer one. I drank the second coconut and carried the third back with me to the cave.
A beautiful Fijian island in the Pacific Ocean. A tropical paradise with sandy beaches and untouched forested interior. An idyllic world with no predators, no poisonous snakes, few mosquitoes and plentiful fish. Why, then, does no one live on it? I’ll tell you why.
Because there is NO BLOODY FRESH WATER.
For certain parts of the year the island produces less water than can sustain one adult male. That’s why nobody lives, or has ever lived, on Olorua.
I walked back to the cave and looked for something that I could do with little expended energy. I took the tangalito sections up into the cave and decided that the afternoon was a good one to whittle. I used a variety of grades of shells as my cutting tools and I began to carve a hollow in the hearth for the drill to sit in. I had to evolve. I had to make fire.
As the sun approached the horizon I tried to pee. It was a very short burst, dark yellow, and its smell hit my nostrils, causing me to physically jerk my head back from the pungent stench. With that cheery signal of dehydration I flicked off the cameras and packed them away. Bollocks to filming. I walked around the island taking in the last hour of golden sunlight to recharge myself. I couldn’t find any water. On Bravo Beach I located one last tree of coconuts that I would still be able to access with my pole.
Although the carpentry and my evening walk had calmed me I couldn’t eat supper when I got back. Rationality now slipping, I pulled the leg off a raw crab and tried to force it down. I had always maintained that I wouldn’t take the risk with raw crabs. The sharp fishy mass passing through my throat caused me to vomit coconut water on to the beach. Today I had drunk three coconuts, 900ml of fresh water and eaten twenty snails, but due to my rashness much of that consumption was now draining into the wet sand. I felt weak, nauseous and pathetic.
My short golden stream of urine arced over the rocks and down on to the wet sand below. ‘Wee one – day nine,’ I scowled at the camera as I commenced a self-imposed pee diary to monitor my dehydration.
The water in the seep was even lower than yesterday. The first check of the day made me wonder if the wick was still working properly. I was desperate for fluids so I gulped down the water in the top pool and decanted the water in the bottle, just 200ml, for later. Completely unsatisfied, I longed for a cup of tea or a long, thick banana milkshake, but such thoughts were torture.
I decided to excavate the beach under a big tree that was growing in a prominent crack near my seep. My thoughts were that the crack should allow water to filter through the rock and that the tree must be using this water to survive. Perhaps there would be another seep of sorts below ground level under the sand. Down on all fours with my clamshell, I excavated a hole big enough to bury myself in. I was wrong. The cliff was dry.
I cleaned out my allotment of giant clamshells so that, if I got some rain, they would not be full of leaves and sand. ‘Come on, rain!’ I coaxed at the benign sky.
The sun had almost completed her ritual daily arc when I opted to excavate some more holes in the beach by Lemon Camp. There were several tiny little streams that were flowing off the beach that I wanted to test for brackishness. I allowed the holes to fill with water and then settle.
Water was the main thing – the only thing – now. Fire seemed like a superfluous luxury in comparison. If I didn’t get more water I couldn’t survive. I was down to my last few obtainable coconuts. With the extra coconut tree that I found last night on my lap of the island, with a longer stick I reckoned I could survive three more days.
After an hour I tasted the streams and they were still salty – far too salty to drink. I didn’t want to call them brackish because I wasn’t even sure that there was any fresh water in them at all. The streams must just have been salt water draining from the upper beach as the tide went out. I must have looked very desperate on all fours again, lapping at the pools with my tongue to test for salt, but I’d only had 200ml of fresh water today and that looked like being it. What other option did I have?
‘I’ve checked every crack in every rock. I’ve tasted every stream coming out of every craggy orifice of this fucking dried-up prune of an island.’ It only had to rain and I’d be fine. But it was day nine and I’d had less than a minute of rain in my whole time here. ‘I feel like I’ve been drinking salt water all day. I don’t know the solution. I just don’t know the solution,’ I sighed.
On the way back I found a load of old man’s beard – great for fire lighting. This lichen was very handy as I could put it in my tinder bundle. It was super-fine and dry and could help me catch an ember.
More valuable were two taro plants that I spotted in a clearing. It was fantastic news as taro is edible but they were small – about a foot high – and so I decided to allow them to grow some more before I dug them up. Spurred on, I searched the whole of the northern end of the island for further edible plants and roots but found nothing. I was being very aware of the sun and the shadows in order to stay orientated. I walked peacefully – hunger and thirst making my day almost dream-like – exploring the interior.
Staying high from the north tip I worked my way back round the west coast (the left side as you look at the map) to just above the rock headland between my beach and Bravo Beach. I hadn’t dipped below about thirty metres above sea level and had had brief glimpses of the neat coral reef that circled the island like the rings of Saturn. I wanted to get to the highest point on the island so from the headland I moved inland and upwards along the spur. As the ground became steeper I had to pull myself up through the bushes to reach the summit, which was just a small patch of uneven rocky ground amidst a tangle of dense spiky plants. Once again – no view at all.
If I’d had the composure I would have laughed at the parallels to my mental state. I was busting a gut to reach a place of perspective and all I could see was the tangled undergrowth around me. The forest seemed to personify ngan duppurru. I was based on a beach with the most wonderful view in the world – all I had to do was breathe and open my eyes – and yet I was slogging through the dense jungle interior looking for a better view. I began to think I was addicted to the struggle.
From the summit I headed south. Without looking, I found a green coconut on the floor so I drank the water, ate a little of the flesh and threw the rest away. Then I was hit by the fact that I wasn’t as ravenous as I had been. It was day nine – why wasn’t I eating everything that I could? Today I’d only had 200ml of water and that green coconut. I hadn’t eaten any snails today – I hadn’t been able to face them. I looked up into the canopy to see coconut trees all around. The green beacon on the brown forest floor had served to show me that I had only been looking for coconuts around the coast. Of course much of the interior was dotted with the palm trees and I was thumped in the arm by my own stupidity.
The southern tip of the island was a distinct point that jutted out into the sea like the tail of a comma. I could see the reef beyond and hear the
waves crashing against it. The shallow water inside the lagoon was a very clear turquoise and even from 300 metres away I knew that I would have been able to see sharks if there had been any. I felt as if I could see every grain of sand beneath the unclouded waters.
As I turned about I contoured around to the east of the island (the right as you’re looking at my map), this time to find the third peak, and I spilled out on to a natural amphitheatre and immediately realised that it must be the drainage basin that had Lemon Camp at the bottom. This single view put the whole island in place for me for the first time. I had a mental picture of the topography although I hadn’t found any more taro.
I wandered down to Lemon Camp just to verify my guess. In a way I wished that the island had been cleaned up a bit before I arrived. I was finding things that I could not ignore that had been left by the local Fijians on one of their fruit-collecting trips. This time the item that made me deliberate was an old long-sleeved top. The green shirt was half buried at the edge of Lemon Camp and had obviously been discarded as being too old and too full of holes. I gently pulled the item free of the earth and saw that it had hundreds of tiny roots already growing through it. Clearly an item like this was a massive help. I could wear it to go out in the midday sun and fish. I could use it to keep warmer at nights.
But right then, at that moment, I deliberated. This is a Discovery Channel series with the word ‘naked’ in the title – can I really just get dressed? From a survival perspective it was a no-brainer but I wasn’t just thinking from a survival perspective – I was filming and self-directing a television series. Editorially this would change the whole look of the series from this point onwards because I would not be naked from the waist up. Clearly a self-made grass skirt is one thing but a green long-sleeved top? I wasn’t sure but I took it as a gift from the island.
On the way home I spotted three of the goats bleating in the sun. I was fairly adamant that the way to kill these goats was to make them tame, lull them into a false sense of security with me and then – bosh – nab one for supper. I decided to speak in a calm voice so that they would know I was there but not relate to me as a predator. My reading-to-the-children voice got me to within three metres of the animals before they fled.
Back at the Faraway Tree I felt like I had a mental map of the entire island for the first time. I knew the three high points, the amphitheatre and gully that led down to Lemon Camp, and the aspect of each of the beaches and slopes above. I was oriented now and the island had lost some of its dark mystery accordingly. Thank goodness.
As I broke through the tree line and my pupils contracted in the bright morning light something was different about the beach. A bit like when you instinctively know a burglar has been in your house, my senses were heightened and I investigated on high alert.
Footprints in the sand. Lots of them. Goats. I registered this and hurried towards my cave. The goats had ventured on to my beach while I’d been out of the camp and I was curious to see if they were in the cave and whether, just maybe, I could trap one.
As I rounded Snail Rock that split my beach in half I could see footprints everywhere but no sign of the goats themselves. I followed the tracks in the soft sand not to the cave but beyond. ‘My fresh water!’ I unwillingly registered.
The goats had knocked over the collection bottle and it was trodden into the sand alongside the cordage wick. I had decanted 200ml into a larger bottle earlier this morning and screwed a lid on, and that was still there, but every drop that had been collected during my morning walkabout was wasted.
I drank the small gritty slurp of fresh water that was in the hollow and rebuilt the seep. ‘I need to lie down. I’m going to the cave.’ I threw in my towel to the camera.
It’s hard to convey how much I allowed the water situation to stress me. I allowed myself to think that survival on the island might be impossible because of it. On reflection I don’t think it was – it was a trick of my mind that I’m only now beginning to understand. I think it gave me an excuse not to be responsible for my situation and to blame something else.
As I write I know that I should have calmly cut a longer, lighter pole, collected more green coconuts peacefully while whistling ‘Whistle While You Work’ and I would have been just fine. But I was no longer just dealing with the physical requirement to be hydrated – this had become very much a self-created distraction, a battle to become entangled in, a war in my head to avert my attention from the truth. What truth? That I needed to be accountable. That I needed to take responsibility for myself and look after myself. That nothing or no one else should affect my self-belief. That I could trust myself to make it on my own.
Isolation was taking its toll on me and I was running scared instead of facing it head-on. I needed someone or something to get angry with about my situation and so water was currently it. What I should have realised, of course, was that I was the only person who could help myself and I just needed to take full responsibility for my water situation. I didn’t – I felt out of control and I spiralled into being a victim of cruel circumstance. I projected bad planning on to the production crew. I felt that the weather was my enemy. Anything to distract me from being present, accepting what was going on, taking my life into my own hands, and dancing through it all. But my anger was all-consuming and blocked the simple lesson I was being taught.
By mid-afternoon I decided – not really sure why – to build a shelter. My mental state was definitely affecting my judgement and I rushed into an attempt at home building. My offering was a sort of Cub Scout bivouac with flimsy poles and a poor attempt at thatching. I spent about four hours cutting poles, making beach hibiscus cordage and lashing a small frame together. By the time the evening was drawing in I had tied on about six woven coconut palm tiles, too, in an attempt to thatch it. The shelter was small, weak, rushed and only half finished.
‘Wow – definitely going a bit doolally,’ I admitted to the lens in a moment of partial clarity, ‘but I am halfway through the shelter and I’ve invested a huge amount of time into it.’ I was freezing cold and the wind was howling in off the beach. There was a storm coming. I was tired, deflated and fucking miserable.
Only a pinch of analysis reveals that I was attempting to be constructive and make something that I could look at and be proud of to make myself feel better. In a flash I saw why I’d needed to walk the Amazon. Hang your hat on that achievement, Ed, and you can forget about growing up and becoming accountable. My expectations of being able to move into my tiny shelter this day were absurd. I abandoned the crappy shelter and returned to the cave deflated.
I was really struggling to get coconuts, and I could have spent the four hours calmly collecting from new sources in the interior. But I hadn’t. I’d had twenty snails but I needed to get some carbohydrates in me. I was going to eat snails, felt like retching and I thought if I ate snails again I was going to vomit.
Then it hit me. ‘I think I’m actually ill. Fuck.’ I feel horrendous and I have fifty days left. I was burping a lot – had trapped air inside me. Illness instantly became the next thing to use for an excuse for my inability. It wasn’t my fault if I was ill. That was outside my control. Deep down I knew that two months on an island was nothing compared to 860 walking the Amazon but in this isolated, stripped-bare existence it seemed an eternity. I felt very sorry for myself and was scrabbling for a justified escape route from the next fifty days.
‘Just absolutely exhausted – at the end of my tether,’ I moaned. ‘I need to get to a point where I’m eating enough food and drinking enough water.’ Projecting the blame on to this one, all-consuming thing kept me in a state of being out of control. ‘Without water – you can’t have life!’ I panicked. I wanted to go to sleep, to shut out the madness and confusion of this world . . . but it was only lunchtime.
‘OK. Take control, Ed – you need to slow down and make something that does actually benefit you.’ I acknowledged that I
had been wrong to try and build a shelter at this stage as I had my cave. Shelter shouldn’t have been high on my list of priorities anyway.
Keep it simple. Small tasks. The green shirt. I hung on to the plan that other achievements would cancel out my frustration with the water. Clearly I was avoiding the one thing I needed to address because I found it easier to blame than to fix. With a sense of purpose I took the dirty green shirt into the shallows and washed it in seawater. I had to be gentle as the worn material was already paper-thin and full of small holes. I carefully picked out every small root, trying not to traumatise further the terminally ill garment. Once rinsed and lightly wrung out, I hung it on a branch in the soft evening sun to dry and was surprised at how comforting it was to have washing hanging out to dry. How utterly, reassuringly normal. But distraction now over, my situation remained the same.
I dragged the giant pole on to Bravo Beach to harvest more green coconuts. With the new view and sitting in the new surroundings I attempted to make a coconut palm hat. I had only ever seen this done on YouTube but it had looked simple enough. I had to split the frond, cut it to just over the circumference of my head, plait it and join the ends into a circular crown. I managed all this but then there was a bit that involved passing all the ends through the central hole to make a rim for the hat. Try as I might, I could not remember what to do next, or improvise anything that didn’t cause the whole palm leaf to unravel. I was too tired to do it properly and I stopped trying after an hour and a half. ‘How about I just stick that T-shirt that I found today on my head, eh?’ I proposed. ‘That’ll work.’ I looked defeated.
I tried on the green shirt for the first time once it had dried. I did a twirl with my arms extended. ‘Clothes!’ It felt luxurious and decadent to slip the material over my bare skin. I stared at the camera screen showing me in clothes. The fit was good. ‘Thank God Fijians are big bastards.’
