This will be a true test of your mental stamina. Survival is 90 per cent positive mindset and if you have got it, this will be one of the most rewarding experiences of your life.
Bushmasters offers both Standard and RAW and 24/7 survival.
Standard
This 16-day trip takes you to the remote, pristine jungles of Guyana, in South America. With a Bushmasters instructor and the vast knowledge of two senior, local Amerindian guides you will learn just how comfortable you can make yourself in the jungle with almost nothing.
As soon as you arrive in country we start the acclimatization and jungle training package. We will give you all the essential jungle kit you need, then fly you off in a light plane, hundreds of miles deep into the jungles of Guyana.
You will have the chance to put up and sleep in your own hammock, learn how to use a machete safely, bathe in jungle rivers and take in all the wildlife and strange sounds the forest has to offer.
Survival training starts after a day's paddle in dugout canoes to a location much deeper into the jungle. En-route we will fish for piranha or the massive Imara fish, and hopefully we might bump into Giant Otters, Macaws and maybe a few Caiman basking on the banks of the river en-route.
The survival training will take you through all the skills you will need to find water, make shelter, light a fire and procure food. You will be eating some strange, but very tasty bugs, getting a fire going with no match or lighter, drinking water from vines and be off hunting with bow and arrow for your dinner, plus much more. Throughout this time you are in hammocks in the jungle, and we’ll be moving camp every other day, with you doing all the work, including cooking your own food.
Finally, training time is up and you are off on your own, or in a buddy pair, to a new piece of the jungle where for the next two days you must do everything yourself. With little more than a belt kit and the clothes you wear, you will have to put all your new found skills to the test. You will have no torch or watch or any modern gadget to help you. It's down to your wits and will to survive now. Can you cope?!
Eventually the local Amerindian search party finds you. You will be physically and mentally exhausted, but still in the middle of the jungle and so you and your team need to get out.
At the end of this adventure we will throw you into the lap of luxury for a day to unwind, swap stories and drink some beers with our guides. From there it is back to the capital of Georgetown by light aircraft, stopping en route at the tallest single drop waterfall in the world, Kaieteur.
Following Kaieteur we fly off, back across the jungle with huge Tepui mountains in the distance. These are table top mountains, which just rise out of the jungle and were the inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's story of "The Lost World." We cut over the Essequibo River, the third biggest in South America and wider than the Channel from Dover to Calais at its mouth and land in Georgetown for our last night in Guyana.
Raw Survival
Are you up for a jungle survival adventure, but can't afford it right now... then maybe a RAW package is for you.
For a few trips every year, we cut out all the fancy luxurious items in an effort to reduce costs to the bare minimum. Light aircraft charters in and out of the jungle, stays in posh lodges and trips to waterfalls are all very expensive. Distances traveled are large plus the lodges have to be self sufficient. There is no electricity or sewage system - they have to build it all and do it in an environmentally friendly way, which all costs money.
On a RAW trip we will drive you for nearly 14 hours in a 4x4 truck in and out of the forest. There are no smart lodges for you to stay in and we're afraid it will be an additional expense if want to visit Kaieteur Falls. But, you get exactly the same survival package, same staff, same fun, same amount of sleep deprivation, same chance to survive on your skills and wits alone.
A RAW trip means you get all this at about a third off the price of a standard Survival Course. Now there really are no excuses! Can you cope?
24/7
For those of you short on holiday or just wanting a little bit of survival training followed by a week on a Caribbean beach comes survival 24/7.
For 9 days we'll take you through all the main skills needed to survive in the jungle. The things we’ll teach you are the same as on our RAW and Standard courses, in the same jungle, with the same amazing local hunter guides, but we just compact it into a week. Given time pressures we have to fly you in and out of the jungle, (vehicles just take too long) and we'll have to condense the isolation phase to one day.
But you'll still learn how to find water, make fire, build shelters and find food, either by catching piranha, poisoning rivers or out with bow and arrow stalking wild game in the jungle.
