00:00:00 Speaker 1: This is the me Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwearless because I'm wearing my swim trunks from the jungles of Bolivia. And we've been out in the jungle jungle for how long? Eight days? Eight days? And we're back now, stranded in a Catholic mission out in the jungle because the plane couldn't fly. We're a couple hundred miles due north of Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Um on the flight out here, you just pass like a hundred miles of uninterrupted jungle. Yeah, probably a lot of like slash and burned eggs, so much soul that the skies, you know, the low VI's ability due to smoke. But then you eventually get out of that just flower jungle and you laying here. There's no road system here because there's an airstrip and it's just a native community. The tribe is called Chimana chaman a territory. And we've been up a river with a bunch of Chimani guys hunting fishing. We've been up there just getting some good stuff. Some bad stuff happened to us. Now we're back here, stranded it's hot. No one's wearing her clothes except Dorty, who's got his um one of his dirty buys those t shirts of you ever been like gas stations in Montana or places where they sell those airbr or to be like a full moon and like some wolves heads, or like well, this is what's this question? This is a this is a winged Native American on top of a winged horse. And it used to say, Idaho, No, the horse isn't winged. It's not oh no, but it's it's cloudy, and there's a horse sort of racing. Then eagle with a winged um planes warrior. This used to say, Ida, hope, I once buried, accidentally buried this shirt in the on a beach on Lake Ponder. You know, I'd hope for three months. I lost it one night swimming and then came back three months later and found it buried in the sec Did you go digging quarter or no? No, that trip that you found it. So we have a ton of ground to cover. We gotta talk about getting bit by bullet ants. We gotta talk about eating monkey meat, um the giant catfish called the maturo. We gotta talk about eating unfathomable quantities of dried salted meat, rotten sometimes sometimes rotten another. At first, I want to say, who's here? Philbert Bearaboo out of bows here? Friends call him Phil and he's a what do you what do you like to go by? Cinematographer? Philbert's a cinematographer. Um is it Phil? Look for real or just Phil? Philip real? Philip there is a cinematographer based out of Bosa, Montana. This is the first time he ever came out with us. This whole reason we're here, like why we're here is we were doing a mediator episode and then Jannes would tell us, um, who is no longer long tong Yanni. He's now Yanni Chimani based on his ability to excel at jungle craft here in Chamani territory particularly, he started out very strong shooting native bows. These guys Chimani make their bows. Let's introduced everybody, and then just get into it. Geez is here. That concludes And of course Dan Dougherty's here. You need a producer, director man all things and um and these those how do I even start with talking about Chani Indians amer Indians. It's like a term like you don't like a Canadian'd say First Nations people. Right in Alaska, you say Native Alaska. In the US, we say Indian Native American. Sort of the proper term down here is amer Indian. Is that it actually proper though? I think so? Hear you say that amer Indian? Yeah? Really, yeah, I haven't heard that often. What do you what do you hear? Indigenous indigenous? But I think amer Indian is an indigenous South American. I could be totally wrong. Maybe indigenous South Americans. The name is Chermanic. Now my understanding is that they came up, like there was another people here some time ago, some hundreds of years ago, and the Chermany came up these rivers and like through warfare, eyes soon colonize these river systems here, and whoever they pushed ahead of them, they pushed out. And there's legend that there's still like there's probably this legend a lot of places. But some of these guys talk about legend or warnings that up some of these rivers, the headwaters of some of these rivers in this area, they're still uncontacted. People's called the ancient ones. That they call the ancient ones would be that the Chimani pushed them out. The Chimani lived by uh small garden plots, so they live in hole was built entirely of native materials, so like a bamboo type framework thatched roofs. They have garden plots where they grow plantain, pineapple, yucca, yucca fruit, lemons, limes, papa guabo, a plant called barbasque barbasco which they used the poison fish um and they draw their protein largely from the river Um. They have some modern forms of fishing where they have access to nets, they have access to monel filament and hand lines. But they kill a lot of fish by using bows and arrows, and they kill a lot of fish um using something we'll talk about a minute called this like that they poison fish the stuff called barbasco. But anyway, he's like on the surface level what we were doing, because we're coming on here with these guys who are establishing a business, trying to establish a business, have established business taking people up the targets called dorato and like a dorado's this big, I mean it's in the same broader grouping as prime as where it has these really pronounced teeth and a strong job out front it's a very robust fish that will take a fly right. They're aggressive, pasciferous fish and a bitch slap a fly. So it's kind of like the new It's like sort of like the new frontier of fly fishing is to come out, come down to the jungles in South American. Try to catch a drittle drawing means gold you all see him called golden drafto. These big golden fish. They almost gonta resemble salmon structurally, you know, thick. I mean, these fish got shoulders on, very powerful fish. Um Chimani like to eat them. But these guys are trying to establish catching release thing where dudes like Westerners will come out to try to catch one. Frankly, going into it, I couldn't really, I mean I've caught the things before in Argentina. I couldn't really. I wasn't that excited about the prospect that coming out and catching them. But what intrigued me was just the river travel where you're going up into areas that these guys are pushing up into areas up this river here that we're on where like the chimana haven't even been you know, they go way up to the headwaters this river. So it's a really interesting journey. And also there, I think they treat me a lot. Was hanging out with the natives because they bring all their stuff to you know, the hunting fish, and so we did a lot of that, and um, the fishing frankly was sucking. Yeah, this was a fishing guy for a long time. What would you say about the fishing, Joanny? It was like fishing conditions were terrible conditions we saw as far as like turbidity levels. I don't know exactly how they measure them, but I think it's they like lowered like a white plate on a rope, you know, down into the water and then at what point you can you know, still see the white play And I say the best that we saw, yeah, to test surbidity. And the best that we saw, I'd say if it was like an eight inch white plate was maybe a foot and that might be generous. You know, they test tenderness on me. I just think all the Warner Bruntler Sheer Forest tests. We'll say that for another podcast. Um, it rained like holy hell. So anyways, Yeah, it's to bring it into everyone's turn as a fishing guide. If I would have come and seen conditions like this, you would most likely just turn around and take folks back to their hotel or whatever. But here we can offer a discount the future. No, no, it's not just cancel the trip and just just take it. Yeah, because no, you know that fishing is gonna be very very especially fly fishing. You know where the fish really need to be able to see a fly. But in our case, it took us four days, five days to just get to our location. So it's not like you can just turn around at that point with promises of a lot of not only clear, but like crystal clear and blue turquoise, vodica colored. But when this river is clean, it's it's we saw pictures and videos of it, just like Paradise. Yeah, I saw a picture. Feels amazing. And when the thing is down here, you're trying to coincide when you come down the fish, you're trying to come the dry season, because when you know it's underneath all the vegetation, the jungle and on the beach is just this red mud, kind of nasty mud, clay clay, right, so when it rains, the river just turns red, reddish brown rust. It turns rust color and you can't see ship right. So in the moment we witnessed numerous landslides that big ones, big ones big enough to kill people, are definitely big enough to bury you car sized rocks. That one was the car size for sure, certainly enough mud and one like one big splooge that it would could you know, muddy out a river of you knowfs, no problem, and you to do this trip properly. You want to come down during the dry season. And we thought I was on the impression of dry season. And we got down here and it was kind of all, this are the tail end of the dry season, and it rained all the time and mud everything. But we're getting out of ourselves. So to get to this place, what you do? You? I went Seattle to Houston, Houston, Lehman Prue, Leman Prue to Santa Cruz, Bolivia overnight and in the hotel. Then we got on some Cessina's like charter assessments were those like Forest No. Six six Sessinas and flew out to a very rough you know air strip kind of hacked into the jungle a couple hundred miles away, so a two hour or two and a half hour direct like flying you landed a little aira strip from here, we got into a bunch of dugout canoes. These boats are sweet because they the most of local guys and they're building one just for personal use, like family use. They just used a treat, so their whole rat, their whole boat is just huge from a treat like a dugout. Very very long boats. Yeah, very narrow, very long boats. So it's like you got to be have a lot of you know, control and discipline to riding these boatsed up flipping them. We're these bigger ones. If you think they're made that, I got a question for you. Think they're made that way for efficiency for traveling up and down the river. So you can think it's bost boat, the most boat you can get out of the tree man. Yeah, I would say it's a practical thing. So if the tree was bigger, they would have a um like a greater ballast. Maybe, I don't know. They answered that. That's a good question. These boats are like you see some on the water. I'm not exaggerated, say they're twenty inches wide. You see six seven people big. I mean look imagine like a big long, skinny tree hould out. But the ones we were in. We climbed into four boats that the base like the whole was one tree with the nig from a from the same country. They cut planks and make the boat taller. What you're thinking our boats are twenty what some of the ones you see on the water. No, our boats are wide enough to set up like a lawn chair in it. Put a ton of weight. So we're running how many guys in the boat? You know that many dudes plus very small amount of gear um and they're pushed by these eric cooled engines that resemble a go devil or a mud buddy. But they're made in Thailand. It's a it's like an air cooled engine amount on. It's like a Honda motor with a very a company in Thailand with a very unfortunate name of KKK who builds the shaft in prop and so it's like this Thailand company KKK puts this what's got like a six ft shaft a very very small propel around it. The used to run the rivers. The maneuver ability of these boats is so pissed poor. You gotta have a dude up front the push pole because you're not going to steer to some bit. So you got a guy in the back with this long long boat, I mean like well over twenty long both and a six ft shaft on the back with a teeny little prop, and and one or two dudes up front push pole and the guy in back to help push pole to run these rivers. And so we've all pile into this stuff and travel up river. And along the way you pass these communities. And these communities are all Chamane, and they might have The biggest one was Coucci Sum. It's called Cucci Sound. It's like a hundred and some people living in it, not right in the right, not right in the village, but in the larger Couci Sum area. I think it was like fifteen families, a hundred fifty people or something like that. Yeah. Basically, like if you go up rivers, so maybe if you go up river ten miles as the crow flies, which is twenty five river miles, you go up and pass these small little villages, these native villages, and they get more sort of not they seem to get a little more non Western, non Western iss are like fewer Western influences as you go up river, and the last one you come to is that this they're all muslimer at tributaries. The last one. There's this tributary called Channing, and there's a town there, Pachenning, and it seems to kind of be like a family. It is, it's one. It's one family and Pochenna run by a man who likes to pull a cord um, very intoxicated man, as we found. And then once you pass the Channing there's nothing up ver. You go up in it and it just gets wilder and you get into the mountains. So you start out and you're in flat ground and you start climb up in the mountains. The first day we went up, so we went up in camp. You're pushing up river, got up troubled all day again camped realized that the chimane dudes or someone the blame fell on them. But I think it's more complicated. It's like, definitely more complicated. That someone forgot something back in town, the fishing balls. Someone forgot some fishing routs, not all of some of the fishing rods back in town. And when I say town, I mean the mission we started we flew into and I forgot my my little fan too. That was the real reason, don't he forgot his fans, So we had to stop for a day and send some shining guys down. So but there's how many. There's four of us too, you know, like western educated Oblivion's one lives in the US who run this organization, and then a grand total. We started out with Himani isn't picked up two more. Tremonti is in another village. So horride, we were like the old days. We were like back to the nineteenth century expedition. Like we're like when Roosevelt went to Africa to hunt and they had a hundred and some porters carrying the stuff to hunt. It was like that. It fell off a lot oftentimes like a school field trip. Like when everybody got moving and going, i mean walking down those trails, there were a lot of heads to count. It felt to me like a like a like nineteenth century exploration element, like someone like hand them lemonades the whole time his native dudes carry everything around. There's a lot of people, there's a lot of way. It was just it was by far the biggest expedition that we've ever I mean we've done some large expeditions, but not I'm part of this a question of efficiency. It wasn't especially efficient. The only time having that many dudes came in handy was packing up camp, like you can't packed up pretty quick. But then is like a lot of people have nothing to do, but they're all having a good time because they're getting paid and they're getting to go somewhere cool, and it's better hunting fishing than it is at home, or certainly has the potential to be a lot better hunting and fishing. It doesn't home. And then these guys might grow up and live their whole lives on the river but have never gone up the river as far as we went. I'm kind of glad there's that man, though, because just in it's just in the sense of meeting that many different guys, because that was it was handy to have them around when we're drinking at night and like just getting at home. But I was on I was made uncomfortable by it at first, because it's it's like when you envisioned like impoverished people from other countries thinking about Americans, right, you're sort of almost coming down like living like probably the worst suspicions, like dudes who stand around watching you carry their stuff around for them, and it just made me a little bit uncomfortable because like you want to be self sufficient and have some and be like, yeah, you know, we're from America, world's most powerful country, richest country, carrying my stuff, you know, just so this is awkward for me. But at the same time, how can you fall to do it for wanting to make some money? Man? And in the end, in the end of all this resolved, and then all this is great, and we made some good friends despite a humongous language barrier because the chermany some of them speak a little bit of Spanish, but the Chianti speak Chimani. The guys were with who organized semi organized the expedition, Um, they speak Spanish, and so you're getting for us English speakers. Don't he speak Spanish a bit? We're getting everything sort of third story. So anyways, we started the river. We spend the afternoon traveling camp on the river bank. Okay, just tent camp on the river bank. Wake up, spend the whole day traveling up river, tent camp on the river bank. Realize that something was forgotten. So these guys get scolded in a way that I felt was in a prop you and some of them are sent back down river to retrieve these rods. We then spend twenty four hours waiting for them to run all night and all day to come back up to that point. There a rainstorm that night, thunderstorm, big storm. Yeah. What was cool about about their run that that was interesting is like the next day we're in camp or they showed up. At some point We're like, man, where did all these big sabolo come from? And as those boys are running all night long, they had these fish the salvo oak, which we should talk about, but just jumping in the boat. Yeah, there's just herbivorous fish are called sabolo, and it's sort of the base of the river. So it's like the fish that everybody eats isablo. All the big fish eat sabo and the natives eat a slow and they're everywhere. Man, it was funny because we're going up in Janice was trying to think. He's like, I think I've seen these fish before where some dude goes out at night and shines a light the fish. I'll start jumping out of the water when these guys get backed from going down and get the rise. We spent the whole day digging around camp and they go back to get the rods. They come back and they got a mountain a sa blow and I'm like, what the hell are they doing? How are they catching them all? And just apparently all the sablow jumped in their boat while they're running down river at night in a big soa blow and they go to like three pounds four pounds. There's a hell of a lot of sabolo as long as your hand. There's you know, a lot. They're big. They come back up. Do we even bother traveling up river that night? We didn't. In a very short run of about two maybe three hours, traveled up river again, camp down the bank. At this point we've been digging with fishing, and no one's called a thing yet. Okay, I think we had one white maybe had one bite a ad and the fish got that's right. We threw a cast net, caught some sabol over the casting net. Wake up the next day, travel all day again and reach as high as you can get the boats they called ass which is like a pepper. That's a pepper nangs to grow up there and grow pepper, And that's kind of the end of line. You're not gonna get a boat anywhere beyond that, even though it's still a shipload. The river up a boat and you're not gonna get a boat past that point. But then we're how many days into this four? I think it's day we got the main camp, so four days to get there. We realize we only got three or four days to be there. And the river, even though it's like I suppose like, oh yeah, how you go clear, it gets all that, just the river looks like garbage. So we plan out right when we can't fish, So the first thing we're gonna do is go out in the jungle to hunt with the Chamani. Now Inblivi, it's like, technically this is something I have to look intymore. It's sort of illegal behunt, but everybody hunts. There's just no like hunting is completely unregulated, okay, because the indigenous people have still I don't say, like complete autonomy there. Yeah, I said. The way I was explained to us is just that that nobody. I don't know if it would be legal economy, but it would just be like they get to do what they do. There's no regulated honey, So there's no seasons, there's no bag limits, right, It's like offer the people to decide what they do. These guys like the hunt at night. Um, they primarily hunt at night with flashlights with bows. And it seems to be that recently what the technology has been rolling in as break open shotguns. Oh yeah, double douce as they got twenty two to the guys, to the older guys that were kind of like seemed like pretty experienced. I want to stay woodsman, pretty experienced jungleman. Just dude Marko and his dude Alberto. When we picked this guy Alberto up in one of the upper villages. He when I bought a bow from him, and I'll talk of these bowls real quick. They make bows entirely a native material, so that the actual bow was one piece. It's not laminated. It's just like one carved piece. There's a plant. They make fibers from a plant and they weave it. First string. The arrow is is bead with a fore shaft and the reeds soft and they what do you call that like the string like serving they're serving on each end of the of the shaft made from another plant that they we even do a string a thread cord and wrap it. They fletch it with different feathers either curves out or we saw what else can with the toucan. I think feathers on the toucan. The bow and the tip are made of bamboo, some form of bamboo. Yeah, but there's a shafts like a shoot on bamboo. They make a tip from and and everybody carries the same collection of arrows that carry a couple of fish points, which are like these long, thin points with barbs carved into them, and when you stay long, they're kind of close to two feet. Well, the whole day of Errol's eighteen inches two feet, the whole day of errols four feet tall. Yeah, it's definitely the longest arrow you've ever seen. And the point is made long because you're gonna be shooting fish and shallow rocky water constantly dulling it, and so that you can quickly resharpened and be back in the game. So I'm guessing one of those points lasts a lot of shots. That's why I was most impressed by those fish points in the hardwood, and how easily they would pierce the fish, and how even maybe better than metal it is just because you can sharpen. That was really impressive to me. We could have been out with these guys, you know, these other like indigenous hunters in in Guyana, and they had they probably started with the same set up. I imagine their bowls are very similar. But they were running. They had hog wires so like that heavy fencing, and they would pound fish points out of hogwire and put a barb in and with a file um. But you realize that they their system was a little bit reliant on mammade materials and these guys it's just not like all ship from the jungle. Um. Same with the boats. So everybody's get up. Like every dude that's got a bowl walks around with his bowl and he's got four or five arrows, two or three fish points. He's got a blunt tip which is like before shaft that's thinner than the end of a pool queue with a big wooden blunt. It looks like something you use the like when you're when you're making a mohedo, like that thing you use the mash. The mint leaves up multa ahead and then a big game point or a land animal point, which is a big it looks like a spear point when you look at it, it's actually bamboo and it's sharper ship and you can shoot it and then shave off a little bit and sharpen it and it's like a spear point, no metal whatsoever. And his dude, I was asking him how far how much penetration he gets on something like a tape here and a tape here, like three pounds thick skin. He said he'll get four or five inches of penetration at that point. If you don't hit it in the heart, you will not find it. So you can image edge. The shotguns are pretty popular. When we picked this Chimani Alberto up, he was packing. I bought a both from him. He was packing another boat with two fish arrows, and he brought a sixteen gage Russian made shotgun. It looked like it was made eons ago. The buck plates said Bocall like Lake Bacall and all the shotguns that was made in Russian. I don't think he even said sixteen engage on it. I didn't see it. And he had a homemade strap made from some quicksilver strap like the surf company. So you get there and we're like he's like, We're like, what what do you want to go hunt? And he wanted to go hunt at five o'clock. So we messed around and get a late start and me and Dane, don't you start following this dude to Alberto and du Marco. Marcos got a bowl, he's got his fish points. His spear point is our thing. And we started walking. We don't get I don't know. We didn't get very far into the jungle, maybe ten minutes at the most. I'd said fifteen minutes. And there's these little orange things on the ground that looked like a you don't look like right, apricot, like dried apricot quarters laying on the ground. And Marco turns to me and I couldn't tell he's making a symbol to me. We can't talk to these guys at all, right, it's all just gestures with the word he could use a little Spanish out. He turns me and makes a gesture like I think he's making a gesture like a roma. Like he's sort of running his hand up to his nose as though he's like if you were trying to cook something and bring the smell of what you're cooking up to your nose. By now, think wafting, throw a moving for him. And I'm thinking man stuff likes to eat the fruit. And it was kind of a smear on a leaf, like a ship like smear, and he touched that and smelled it. And then they started looking up in the tree and there is a monkey, a red monkey, red howler monkey, a red howler monkey up in the tree. And you feel like the monkey spooked a little bit, don't you you know what? Not? I mean, it did, but slowly. I think right when we first saw it, it it was just it was basically just sitting right there, maybe fifteen yards up in the tree, and it's slowly. Yeah, I know, I don't know how spooked it was. Maybe it was spooked, but I didn't feel like it was booking. I felt like it was just so, you know, ambling away. Maybe I don't know. I want to say to man, these dudes are in tune. These dudes I have lived kind of in the same place their whole life are super intune what's going on. And when you're on the jungle, if you're not, I haven't spent much time to the jungle at all. It's bewildering how much sound theer is. It's definite, there's all these sounds going off. They don't give a ship about most of sounds. Let me hear one sound like this, and they really interested. Man, even though it's like a hundred yards away, they got like what was that? They're like that fruit and it's sure if they look on the train here. This is how a monkey is. How a monkey starts kind of leaving the area. And to do with the shotgun goes after it. I live. Nobody tells what happens next. Well, it's too disturbed. It's too disturbing you to talk about. I didn't actually find that disturbing. So we saw the monkey, and all my first thoughts obviously we have to turn around looking lightly whole. Look at that thing, look at that Describe that somebody, you only describe that picture. We've been watching it for probably three hours and it's been just constantly this evolving giant thunderhead off in the distance. When're very flat country, so it's a very big sky and off in the distance there's a giant thunderhead that takes up probably the skyline. And you know, it looks like as if you had a veil, like a veil and behind it were shooting off flash bulbs. That's incredible. That's probably why we're here. That's probably the storm like that. Yeah, but the lightning is almost constant. It's just it's just moving through this giant thunderhead illuminating different sections of it. And there's still pieces of sun illuminating. Like that cloud in the movie Ghostbusters. It looks like that big dark solo cloud comes in and get some hardcore jungle ship out here. So anyways, here's his monks, there's there's a monkey, here's a shotgun, and um so I have all my thinking about it. First of all, I just getting one clean shot of that monkey in the tree, which I was able to get several, So it wasn't booking. It was there, it was red. It was obviously a howler monkey. I would say it was aware of us. Yeah, no, it wasn't. It wasn't you thought it was probably best to take off. Yeah. It wasn't making noise though, and it wasn't moving especially fast, because I think probably within thirty seconds. It was thirty seconds i'd say, from when we saw it and until the shot happened, and enough tree he moved one tree over and came down closer to us. So now a howler monkey, I think if you were standing up in a holler. Monkey stood out, He's not gonna reach your waist close. I don't think like just above knee hid maybe yeah, off his head if you're standing next to you long tail and yeah, so what I think They looked to Steve first to see if he shoot it. Steve did not want to shoot the monkey, but Steve quickly said shoot it. Uh yeah. I had a bowl with me. I had a compound bow I brought down. I don't know if I was going to use the thing, but I feel like it helps sort of in a communication way, you know, like fellow hunters kind of stuff. Um, but there's no way I went down like I'm not gonna, like I vowed long time ago to not hurt monkeys. It's like where I drawline. But Albert Tilda Chimani hunter has no problem hurting monkeys, and in fact, he loves to eat monkeys, and they all do. It's one of their favorite their favorite food. It seemed to me was was the was the small the spider monkey which they called Marie Mono. This one they called man, which is that red holler? And I mean it was just you know, like I have now filmed probably I don't know, fifty animals getting killed. And it was simple was there was a monkey in the tree and there was a shot and it took probably ten seconds. I feel like maybe it was clinging on or something, or what happened? What happened? What do you mean what first fell out of the tree. I didn't see that. You saw that? Yeah, I saw it. Well, the monkey gets hit was just like hitting squirrel up and tree with the shotgun, where you know he's gonna come down, but you're not correct your win, like he's still kind of hanging on and out jeez man, bats, lightning boats, lightning bolt. Out comes a baby monkey. There's riding on the monkey. The baby monkey falls hangs up in the brush. You saw that first, you said that come down. I saw the monkey. I saw the baby monkey come right out of the monkey. Oh shout. I didn't see that. It was packing around a little baby. There's a happy ending to this. But the baby monkey falls down on the tree. Then the big monkey comes down on a tree and then it kind of howled like a holler monkey a little bit. So these guys are too can think about that, and they pick up the big monkey, pick up the baby monkey, come up, have a smoke pack some coca leaves and then cut the bottom of the tail off, which I missed on camera. Unfortunately I didn't see it. That's those dude, Alberto. They're smoking. And these guys are into their substances, man, from everything I saw, they like alcohol, are like cigarettes and they chew cocles and cokeleans or what. I developed quite a findess for it too, just has a physical act or anything. But they Coca's cocaine like coca cocaine comes from a coca leaf, but it's like a chemical process I gather to make cocaine out of it. But it's legal down here to have coca leaves and the chimane and Doty says all over South America like working class people Native people just packed their gum full of coca leaves. It's just miless, not just gum though. Cheek it's not gum like chewing tobacco in the States. It's like it's like a giant and they call it a bull because it's a ball they form. It looks like a Q ball in your cheek definitely in numbs your tooth, numbs your cheek and numbs your tooth but I couldn't really tell what it does. You really didn't feel anything. I couldn't. It's it's not more than having like an espresso. No, definitely not. I'd say even a little smoother than that. But you're missing that. The other important part is that they activate the alkaloids in it by baking soda. So a very basic substance, or yes, basic substance you take. You take baking soda, dip your finger in it, and then you kind of rub it on the inside of the bolo, and that taste good rising. I was scared of that ship first. Toward the end, I was packing at least these guys running racquetball. I was running a golf ball with bacon sold it. And they also drink alcohol activit. So for out with these dudes. Alberto Barco interrupt this monkey thing for minute. I think they got one water bottle. I'm just pouring sweat, don't he sweat and so bad? He thought something was wrong. It was up. God, he's dying. It's that. No, I'm sweating too like that. Meanwhile, I'm just drinking water. I drink all my water within the hour. And these guys got one little sixteen ounce bottle to look like it's been like washed up on the beach, you know, and it's full of what I think is water, And every time they stop they swap a swig and all that. I'm thinking, Man, these guys don't drink any water. Oh, they're just like barely going through this one bottle. And I realized it's this stuff that's like taste. What is it. It's called sing ghana. It's a great if we're drinking it right now. Liquor man out of grapes. It's kind of like a very strong cropper in Italy. But but they like it too because it releases more of the alkaloids from the coca leaves. Anyways, they shoot the monkey, have a smoke, have some more coca leaves, have some alcohol. Then Marco walks over to a tree and cuts a fong like cuts a string of tree bark, ties it around the monkey's chest right below his arms. And his monkey you're used to animals to have six or eight teats. This monkey is nursing. And this monkey has two tits right where humans tits are, and it looked like humans tips, and it has a humans vagina. Wraps the string around his armpits, wraps string around his waist and runs like across his shoulders. Takes a little extra string to tie the baby on there, and we had offered the jump. I think it's worth mentioning that old tail thing, well, the detail thing, and just like there was a moment more than a moment of sort of shock and sort of you know, not not that I was shocked by it, That's what I mean. You were shocked by No, I was shocked by I don't mean to sound I don't mean to sound casual about it. I had gone and the question. I have held to dinner with some friends a couple of nights before leaving, and we were talking about the trip, and I was saying, I understand these boys love spider monkeys, and I said, I will not shoot a monkey like I don't watch. I would rather shoot a person than a monkey, because I just like, uh, they're just like in the words of Jerry Clower, they're too much like folks. And to see that monkey get shot now that but the way he was carrying around his baby, and also that it had breast, human breast and the human vagina and a semi human face disturbed me. I later ate the monkey some of it, but it disturbed me no end, and I was a little rattled by it. But then it's like, who's the I'm not gonna tell these guys what is your favorite food? Yeah, thats to to elaborate on them. Not only is their favorite like they it is a delicacy. They like it better than deer. They like it better than poka. It is, it is better than beef. They than times to have it translated, what's the best food? What's your favorite food? Is the monkeys? Spider monkey, howid monkey? Because it has more taste, That's what that's That's what was translated back to us. Is because it tasted like flavor or some more like there there was something to it. And the cool thing is this guy Alberto, like he pulls out These guys all carry a little kitchen knives. But if you're gonna have a kid draw like the classic kitchen knife, that's what they all carry a lot of carbon steel. They'll have it from a pairing knife side or whatever. No, she's the has like put the knife in their bag, pulls off this little pairing knife and cuts an inch of the monkey's tail off and buries it and I thought. I thought it was an offering, which is an outlandish I think because they later explained us we would have had a better trip had we given more offerings of alcohol, cigarettes, and coca leaves to the river, we would have had a better trip. So he buries the monkey's tail. Later we find out you bury the monkey's tail. You cut the monkey's tail off so that the next monkey you kill doesn't get hung up by his tail in the tree, which is good, which makes me think American squirrel hunters should cut the front feet off. And Janice came up with this idea, tell me you're gonna do the next time to kill it? Lt you re remember saying this, put the grass in their mouth. No, no, he was gonna splatter the blood over the place. So and let me take off into the jungle. And I don't think anything more happening, No, not like a note. But I think I think after that I probably had my favorite moment in meat eater filming history, which was sitting in the pitch dark with those two guys on the top of the hill in the jungle, just like I'm wondering what the fund is going on? You know? Just it was that was my favorite. You were just listening to him talk no, well that yet sitting in the dark, that is sitting in the dark, here in the noises of the jungle, and here in the noise of the hunters, and just like just really soaking in that moment, because that's not something you get to do, you know, no matter what. I've been in the jungle a bunch of times, but being with those guys in an actual, very authentic, you know, looking for game all, it was pretty pretty fantastic. I really enjoyed it. It's scary too, you know, it's just an edge of like you don't know what you're standing on. You don't know what's going on. You've got all these thoughts of spiders and snakes and all this ship, but you're just sitting right on the ground of the jungle like it is. It's a little bit. Yeah, it's a little bit scary, but also beautiful. And it's like because you can't tell what the SMANI are saying, Yeah, they could be like telling a story. Like anyway, So I went down and I went back to Verizon, and they told me that the phone got wet. I mean, maybe they're talking about something like that. But like you want, it feels like they're talking about something different and the language is like who who here and this is not this has comes from a place of love. Who he would like to mimic the sound of m the sani talking, it's kind of yeah, but not goofing on it. I mean it really is like born really, like I later said, it's like the words fall to the jungle floor. Yeah, you know you when you're all the woods, you hear some dudes talking and laughing and ship you would not ever in a million years be all the woods and hear some chimani to do his way off very They don't like talk loud by the river when they're fishing. It's very guttural. There's like because they could be talking about the most banal stuff, but it feels like they're talking about some ancestral hunting business. I got the sense that they were just saying super simple things too. I mean that I had no idea if that's true enough. But they'll stop a gesture about trees and stuff a lot, you know, and not carrying out a conversation, but just like you know, sharing information, and then they would use their flashlights now and then. But now when they stop and just like just like listen and yeah, and the jungle is deafening. Man. Yeah, it's worth to mention again the volume of the jungle at night is just it's mind bottling. I was very on edge and night that I spent, you know, filming you guys hunting. It was like, you're on the trail, it's daylight. It's like, all right, it's woods. You're just in the familiar woods. Doesn't matter if it's Montana, and believe it, you're in the woods. These are woods. And then it got dark and every time I stepped six inches off that trail, man, it's just like my adrenaline just put up just a little bit. Just you don't know, do you think there's any place in the United States that has as loud of a of a night of woods, like down south or anything. And there's got to be around Florida or something that I don't know, Possibly it's loud, but it can't be like this. I've been around, I've been you know, I mean, just sound like a blar. I mean, I've been to a ton of places not never thought that this place is loud. And the next night here right now, Yeah, the next night we go out. Nothing of note really happened during the day. Nothing happened that day, no fish or car. The next night we go out and on the else, say, when you're walking on the trail, they're always kind of looking off your best interest. And there's so many things out there. They're gonna mess you up because some snake. Did you ever catch what that snake was? Look, No, I don't know what it's called. I thought that it might have been the bushmaster, but I don't believe. So it's a little green, skinny green snake. Is it is the worst guy, the most dangerous thing out there. There's some spiders that will mess you up good. And there's this little critter called the bullet ant. It's like kind of inch and a half long. So we get to talking about how we're gonna go out and sit a salt lick at night with flashlights, and we leave before dark again and start walking through the jungle, and nothing really happened. No, No No, don't know what am I saying? No, that got after a bird. I missed the bird a couple of times with my bowl. Marco missed with his bowl. Barrett'll shot at with a shotgun and missed it. But it's this small bird, a gwan they really wanted. They call a lot of birds pavlo, which is Spanish for turkey. That's sort of like they know the names of them absolutely, but they refer to him generally the same when you might say game bird. I guess you think, yeah, yeah, maybe like yeah, you use like the word grouse, right, and there's obviously a bunch of species of grouse. They use pava and it's like bird that is good to eat, and all of these pava there could be any number of birds, black and crests, curras out and the guans anymore. Yeah, I don't know anymore, but it's a couple of guanas. We could after one of those beautiful bird. They wanted it real bad. Um that turns up nothing and through Chase's bird we kind of wind up. I kind of do you think we ever got this? This night? The first thing I went out as being dot and then the next night we go out it's me and Phil Barab Do you do you feel like we got to the salt like you have no idea what's going on because you can't communicate with the duzy with it seemed like we were because he broke branches. We got to this little creek bed, like small creek bed, and he broke branches like a shooting lane. Yeah, that's the set up. And then they both came up. We've found a log, and we sat on the log like you would wait for any other kind of hunt. That's what I felt like. I felt like, oh, he's clear a little shooting lane, and we kind of get away and we got flashlace. But it's still daylight out, just getting dark. And the night before I noticed every time we stepped over a log, they would examine the log and then take the bow tip and kill these big asked ants on the log. And I got the sense, I mean, everything moves, that everything's alive. Is you never run out of new kinds of books. I got the sense that they don't like that kind of ant um. And we're sitting there and I think it was just because I just turned my light on. Maybe I can't even also realized just six of these big gass ants were around us. And you got it first, Yeah, I got it. It was on my shirt. Well, I was worried because we were sitting there and I was worried they climbed up under my shirt and so just as I went to look, it stung me right on the basically first knuckle, my first finger, and I probably screamed a little bit and it on like a bit, and it basically it was like it was a bad beasting. But I didn't know what to think. Initially, Yeah, in initially in the same times, No, it wasn't like crazy, not like a honey bee, but like a hornet, you know, like a bad beast thing where you're like, yeah, you would have thought it was a horn for five minutes beyond, like you can't even say it's smart. It's worse than it's smart. So no, it's like it's you don't think about something else. You would be like, you're like, what something is still on the beat on the neck by be last night, I would have reacted about the same way in the first five minutes of a bullet ant. Yeah, but those bees were like a tenth of when you say, you know, I'm saying the initial z initial zap was be like it quickly becomes a thing like a but it's the initial zap is be like, but before you go into years, how you know, so as a cameraman. I got stung. I knew Patrick, who was one of the guys here, had had kind of mentioned everything that bites and stings and you know, and I remember him saying bullet and and I didn't know if it was bad or if it was just like a b sting or whatever. And so they're asking me, are you okay? And I'm like, yeah, it hurts, but I gotta keep shooting. We're here, okay, we can't. They're gesturings, are you okay? Yeah, And I'm just like whatever, I'm gonna roll with it because we're out here on and we gotta do this. So and then all of a sudden, you yell out, yell. Well, he got this point and said let's go. So we there was enough bullet as here. We have abandoned the plan to hunt the lick. So they were aware of the bullets. Yeah, they are funny that we guessed on aiden. No, they were were the bullets when I turned my light on. I have to turn light on, and was like wow. After you both got yeah, Phil get zapped, They're like, let's go, We'll start walking and I get zapped on the ankle through a neoprene sock. Jeez, and then um, I don't like I have a very low tolerance for pain, and we may get out to the trail and he I don't know what's going on. I was like, I got hit by a lionfish one time and I hadn't read up on it. So it's like you're you get hit and you're like why. I know that it hurts and I can handle all that, but I don't know what this means for me? Right? Is it like getting bit by a rattlesnake? Like do you go to the doctor? Now? Is the trip over now? And the guy Marco gestures to fill explain the gesture he lives at me. So Steve got stung in the ankle. I got stung in the knuckle. So he first looks at me, points to where I got stung on his hand and gestures up his hand, up his arm too, to his heart, saying, basically, this poison is going to go to your heart. You want to he wants like a line like like like scruciatingly slowly this line up your arm to your heart. And we're like, I don't really follow what exactly that means. And then they go to Steve and do the same exact thing from his ankle, but it basically and that his Balza like yeah, he's like, he's like points of film, does it? They'll go to his heart and likes me to Balzac. They're like, so does that mean we dine? Now? I don't know. These eyes both looking at us with they start looking around in the trees and come back with a four inch chunk of vine. In the vine when he cut open, resembles almost like ginger root exactly, and he takes his knife and starts scraping and pulping the contents of the vine and packing it on our bites. And then he kind of says like bomb oh, like you know, time to go with it, like let's go, time to go in points that we either go back to our camper, go deeper into the jungle. And at that point realized that we were going to die, because he was like, pick whichever one you want. We still have no idea what this matter? What? And now it's like intense arthritic joint paint. Would you say, burning and throbbing? I gotta say something here because like you also called back on the radio as we had ready was an hour later, what was it really? Alright? I don't even know why we didn't think about it, and I didn't realize we had the radio still way later, but that was the moment that I realized you were from the Midwest film because because he kind of got like the radio call and you go like, um you copy of copy go yep. You go like, oh, hey, just checking in. How you guys do. I'm like, oh, we're good. What's going on? You know, we weren't our into it, and at that point it wasn't it was way beyond like it wasn't intensifying a definitely, it was just like you know what we called. I was thinking, there's no way I can sleep with this level of paint. That was where I was at at that point, and Marco and Alberta had lost all interest in our bites. We somehow wound up way hass back in the jungle on the edge of the river, laying there on these huge boulders, these huge boulders on this river. We shine for some fish and then we're all laying out on these rocks. Actually, and before that, you gotta mention the Bene drill. Oh, so we took eye profit at ben and drill, which knocked our dicks in the dirt man, but couldn't even stay away around the jungle Middle Night, couldn't stay away, go down the river, and then Middle we arrive at the edge of the river. A barrel shines light the river and I'm nothing. There's a fish's tail at the surf. You can't see three inches in the water, but there's a fish's tail. So Marco Real quick loads bowl the fish are will pull back. The fishtail vanishes, and then it decided that we will now lay on the river bank on the rocks in the dark for an hour, at which point and smoke cigarettes from the cook leaves, at which point I'm like, there's no way i can sleep with this level of pain. And I'm really sleeping from taking the ben and drill, and I remember that we had a CB and or a radio and there's no way they'll hear. It's like, there's no way we can communicate with yeah, but straight there because loud and clear um. It's conveyed to us that it just hurts like a bitch, then goes away. And shortly after it went away the pain. When we got back that night at we got stung red. At dusk, I couldn't remember which foot got hit, like gone the bot in you still have your BikeE though, phill right, you see a little bit, but not that. It was never explained to us what he meant with the ominous hand gesture up the arm and leg, which almost made me puke. When then Phil got nauseous and he couldn't tell nashes from the news or nashes from dying. Must have been the news, because he's here with us now. I can't quite tell now if I'm jealous, I think I know I am. I can't tell I am jealous. I'm jealous of you guys. There's I was on a riverond Peru once and the tribe that that was there the right of passage for their kids. Like when when a boy's fifteen or sixteen, they they like build a pillowcase and they put like seven or eight bullet has in it, and then they tie the pillowcase around his floe arm for an hour. Oh yeah, and he gets bit like hit multiple times for an hour, and that's their right of passage into manhood, one of the rights of passage. I'll do it, yah, Doty's got more. Jill will experience the more sort of like indigenous. Uh, you know a little bit not time. I've spent some time in Ecuador and Proof doing some stuff, but I recalled the number of days I spent in the jungle on the hands and toes. I mean legit jungle, you know, like real legit jungle. It's scary. The third night we went out, I'm skipping all the fishing parts, but the third night we go all. We started out at the all the day we started our way ass out and jumps. We're going off the fish all day and we got a couple of big gass calfish materiro or toro called a dorato um. And it's just getting dark one it's time to go back. And Janice and I we were the whole day and crew they're like, all eight of us are out there. But we decided to like get to be the first guys down the trail. Everybody else will follow later. And we started down on trail and right off the bat again. Bam, monkeys. They couldn't have cared less about these monkeys. Yeah, they were a different species. I don't even know if we clarify what they capucineah. We didn't learn from them what it was. But They're like, well, there's a monkey by the way. I'm thinking what you boys shirt, Oh, we gotta back up before the bullet ant thing. The night we get back with the MoMA monkey and the baby monkey, or like, way down the monkey. We want to film cooking the monkey. They go down the river. We're like, you can go ahead and gut it, So go down the river. They go down the river, and they got the monkey and pull out the kidney's heart and liver and intestines and flush the intestines tournaments side out, put them on a stick, and they asked if they eat the baby monkey. And this baby monkey isn't as long and I'm looking right now at a water bottom. If you stretch this monkey out, he's not as long as the water bottle, say a little kitten a kid. They take them onto the baby monkey, burn his hair off real quick, cut him into They basically had him in quarter room and freed him in a walk little arms head, it's a feat. Look what it's They fried him up in a walk him. It was disturbing. Yeah, out sugarcoated for wet head rig For Westerners, it is a very very shocking picture. You know, we are just not accustomed to anything like that. It's it's shocking, it's disturbing, it's but to them, they were so excited, so stoked, and they fried the baby in oil. The next day were cooking the whole monkey. They take the monkey, holding by the tail, waved over the fire and burn all the hair off the monkey, and they scrape with the machete. Then you go down the river and clean the monkey. Then he kind of cuts all the joints just enough where he can break the joints so open, like you're opened up what would be like your ball joints at the top of your femur. Cut the knee joints a little bit, cut the elbow joints a little bit, took some vines. They use barker behind for which to bind the monkey. Trust it. He trust the monkey with either bark or mind. Yeah, I think he would use bark cut mortals, ropes from the bar and trust the monkey. And then they build a rack up over the fire. You know, they always stay at their logs perpendicular like their fires. They like lay the logs b I'm sorry not don't they always stack the would there's lay a bunch of big logs parallel on the fire. They gotta rack over it, trust the monkey, and then said he's gonna smoke that monkey eight hours, six hours. Smoked the monkey for six hours, then just chopped up the little pieces and they made monkey soup thicken some water, monkey and plantain. Both the plantaine they like, scraped with a spoon, green green plantain scraped real fine, and then it so it became more like a meal because they became kind of a thickening agent or a grave deal. It has been almost like monkey and corn meal, corn mash and grits, right, but made out of plantain skin on it. And it tasted like I struggle. I couldn't think of would taste like now, if I had to say, it tastes like something to tastes like a smoke turkey drumstick with a very thick skin. These boys eat everything they couldn't get through the skin. I didn't see anybody tried to eat the skin. You make a football out of that monkey skin. There's no meat anywhere. I mean, just meat, but it's thin pieces of meat, whatever piece I gotta have, like, I got a good like mouth full of of flesh when I took him. But I don't know what it was. I'm telling what it was, good man. It was very mild that it was alarmed. Say threw the brain and the spinal column in there. And you always hear about diseases that may jump from monkeys, but I think mostly that happens in Africa. That's just a general thing. I think that you're you're you're warranted to not eat much spinal column, fluid or brain, so that I wasn't. I still am a little alarmed, but I was alarmed by the monkey. But I'll tell you what. The monkey was legitimately good. And it didn't taste like and you can see why people like is it doesn't taste like anything. I mean, it tastes good, but it's not. You don't eat it and think it's like, I know these guys are laughing at me. I'm like, now, if I've never served monkey in secret, i'd be like, that's monkey. I feel like I gotta that. I know now, like what monkey tastes like. They're like the brain out of there, they eat the head. There was there's a for me, a lesson. They're just in general about being a meat hunter, you know, and some out you know, the perspective of seeing these guys doing what they normally do and just comparing it to us killing a deer in Minnesota or in Montana. It was. It was an high opening experience just to just to eat it and know that it was not any different than anything that we ever do themselves. No, there was no like you well, all seventeen guys lined up to get monkey, and they were lining up like if you you know, if you had a bunch of dudes you hang out with over your house and you made chili and you're like, chili's ready, and everybody came to get some chili. It was just like that. It wasn't like, oh man, we're weird ship now. It was like, awesome, man, he made chili. Chili is so good. The difference things we had to be strict about them not eating it before we were like, they wanted to eat it that first night, Yeah, they almost did. We had to basically protect this monkey so we could film them. You doing the chili thing. I don't mean like um like it was blase. I mean like you're hungry, your buddy made a great chili. I mean like excited, but not like who you know, Yeah, I feel like it was more like if you were serving up tenureline. There was that kind of excitement. Yeah. Probably I was just saying chili markssthing you laid all out. Yeah, Marco he is he uses a banana leaf of plantain leaf to make a spoon. Man, I feel like there that get more credit. We need to like build him up a little bit. Marco was like, yeah, you're hearing his story though the deer throwing that thing, I can't out. But yeah, so third night out, Marco is like Marco kind merged as he looks older, but he's my age one year older. He's forty one, you know, but it looks like a solid fifty one, maybe even very hard hunter, whether you know, dark skin, traditional haircut. Later told us that later we're kind of the story that was about a jaguar he killed. Only one prided did he bring this up? But a jaguar he killed that He has some hunting dogs and he was out hunting one night and a jaguar killed his dog and he killed the jaguar. And it was a pretty fascinating story if you'd go to the meat eater dot Com were posting that interview, and we went to the interview on the show with someone, Yeah, I think we should will. So he was only monkey and training. They could give a ship about this monkey and that kind of like I'm like, they're looking at me, and I'm like, well shoot the monkeys. I make the universe like pow pow noise, and he kind of didn't care. One of the margaret grabs the shotgun goes off in that direction and uh he said he had a shot. Oh yeah, I followed him. We could see the monkey jumping up through the tree branches. You could see like a full sillo again you know, nighttime you can, but against the sky still had just enough light we could see the full silhouette of the monkey. He points at it, kind of gets his light like you know, positions with the gun pointed at it, and then just was like let's go. You know, they didn't want that kind of monkey. We go down the trail a little bit and Marco's walking point with the shotgun. Albert is behind him with the bow. I'm behind Alberto with a bow, and Est is behind you the camera and all of a sudden you'll see him. They get tuned in and he knows something's going on, and all of a sudden, Marko's got his light, his flashlight and his shotgun. Alberto stops and Marco kind of goes ahead and tell that he's gonna shoot, and I am, you know, with the six he engaged, and again it's amazing because there's no way that I knew that we had any idea ship. He shoots and it's like he hit Godzilla. The I thought it was the tape here something big. I mean, it's sound like a horse couldn't running though the jongle with that. Mom I'm like, holy, I didn't know what was gonna happen. But what happened was he hit a red brocket deer, but he's too far out front and just hit at the tip of his nose and buckshot, so his nose is kind of perfect with four or five buckshot wounds not fatal at all. And the deer for whatever reason, runs up onto the trail kind of like in the middle of us all and stops. I pull out air and I can't see a thing. I pull out area and try to sight it down side and hit the brocket deers in the back leg. The brocket deer runs off in the jungle. Then we got then someone trying to light it out and I shot it through the back end of the rib cage and then it expired, you know, and um, this deer, I know how to describe that deer kind of lower to the ground, very small. They call it what they called boss. It's like the size of a fawn. I feel like a white tail phone in Michigan. It does get shot off and during on season, I mean one of those deer deer you can pick up with, you know, one hand. But it just had a little more plumpness to it. So it's the size of fawn, but it had the fond during hunting season. I was gonna say, more like a newborn. No not yeah, way smaller. It wasn't like a little you know how you see those in the fall deer, like if you shot a deer um September twenty a white tail, not a November farm no way. A small deer, but robust, had a mature looked to it, with small reddish color, had a tail reminiscent of a white tail, but proportionately I felt, had shorter legs. Yes, definitely wasn't a leggy as our white tails. They dragged up the trail and I can't remember there's a term for a camera what it is. It's where you got so I learned the term in Scotland. You got something from the diaphragm back. So he made just a whole but you have to get his hand in and gutted everything from the diaphragm back, meaning the intestines in the stomach, and discarded him. Didn't hang on to him, cut a string from tree bark, tied it around his waist and around its shoulders, just behind its shoulders. Bloody is all get out and then throws it on his back and head it out. Nothing more important happening, right, Nope, you gotta give a visual image of Marco though, yeah, oh yeah, which interesting night vision of what this guy. We are running full long sleeves, pants and shirts, you know, buffs to protect our necks and not just for the sun, but because of of biting stinging things, bugs, and these boys as soon as they get on the trail at night, everybody just makes it shirt off and you know it's just and Marco has a very Bruce Lee like look, you know, were you one years old? Wiry cut and when he put that it's like it is bark basically takes off of the tree. It's maybe like an inch and a half two inches wide, ties a couple of slip knots in it to hold onto the deer, and then it's just the perfect size where the it doesn't go across his shoulders, but it comes over his head and like the strap is right across his chest, just above his nipples. Yeah, don't even carry duffle bags like that, and the belower your clavicles kind of across your shoulder. Yeah, And and lean into it and the deer is hanging basically just above the small of his back. And uh, that was the end of it. We knew at that point as the end of it. I kind of thought, well, from what I had heard, it was like, oh, you'll kill something, and then that the boys are gonna keep hunting because you're out there, You're gonna keep hunting. But what would tipped us off is that the whole way the next hour, the hype back to camp, it was constant chimani jibber jabber, and Steve and I would joke and it's like, you know, we think they're talking about hunting this, that and the other, but they're probably just catching up on the river. So we get back and that dear they they do deer totally totally different. They quartered, They quartered the deer and cut the head off at the neck, believe, all the skin on. They cooked and they got their smoker rack and they cooked the deer with the hair on it. They smoking with the hair on, so you just like literally cut the deer up and you don't pay attention about hairside down and eat side down. For how many hours? Too many a lot? They cooked it on that smoker so long that what the shanks wound up being like assole bookoed almost in a dryway, where the shank was the delicate the was the delicate part. They're like, here's the best part. He strips that hide off the shank and was pulling little pieces of meat out of there because there's so much gelatin in there that they were still kind of moist and tender. Everything else was just that reminded me of smoke turkey. Like to me that that venice and shanks tasted like smoke turkey. But I thought, and they'll leave it on the smoker and they'll pull off the smoker and it gets swarmed in bees in a way you wouldn't believe in general, all of their cutting methods, cooking methods, uh, just a lot rougher than what we were used to. Um. Like, it's like you said, they don't waste anything, but we also just have learned to take so much more care in the preparation of it all. And I'm not saying bacteria stample, yeah, and I'm not taking care of it, but like, yeah, I'll tell you what though, they cooked the hell everything, But that wasn't to say, well, I wasn't. My feeling on inflammation is is unadvertising. Is what they're cooking might look to an outsider. They relish it more than you relish your food. Yeah, they're more excited about than you are about your dinner tonight. One thing I thought was really cool was that the that night, actually both the night of the monkey kill and the deer killed, was to me almost the same exact vibe in an American hunting camp, where they were just absolutely celebrating at home, like they were just happy as ship. You know, they had some drinks afterwards that they were beaming. The entire camp was happy. Everybody huddled around that the butchering big as catfish too, Yeah, No, it was just it was just like it was a pure celebration. Everybody was retelling the story of Steve, you know, using the ball and how fast he shot this. You know, Steve's out here with a white carbon spider, you know, the top top, the best of the best, basically out there as far as modern compound boats. Showing these guys at boat, you might as well, like someone said, you might as well be like an alien showing them your spaceship blown away. It was almost like the first like what do you imagine it was like when the planes Indians or any American Indians saw a rival. It was really shot first shot at that six ft diameter log at tankards blown away. Man, this whole Bolivia trip, and we've only scratched the surface. We talked about one aspect of it. We're gonna turn into three shows, three episodes, twenty two minutes per episode. There's a lot of material, man. And I'll tell you what um coming out of it, I have not a change perspective, but just a really enhanced perspective where um it is fun and very educational and inspiring and beautiful. Um to spend time with indigenous peoples who have a lineage on the landscape that's unbroken. You know, there are many Western influences were with these guys that are shocked on. They have flashlights, but all that stuff winds up seeming very superficial. Um to be out with people who are on the land which is intact. You know this particular place. I know it's a ton of degradation of rainforest all over the you know the latitude of lines that have rainforest, and it's a huge environmental concern and a huge conservation concern. But here in this corner of the world, you can have the experience of being out in intact rainforest, intact the jungle, largely untouched, with people who have been knocking around here forever um hunting the things they've always hunted, and in ways the way they've always hunted them. And it's it really is, despite everything biting you and there's heat in the sweat and and just the pervasive uncomfortableness is as a hunter, very inspiring, very uplifting. I would say we're coming on having made about sixty episodes of mediat or more at this point, and I would say, whatever you need to do to get your eyes on these shows, because because there's that there's something here that's that's pretty special. Just the depth of the of the character and the of of both the place and the people that we were with that I think it's gonna be something to really keep an eye out for. Yeah, so we are the shows. None of we turns into a big ad for the show, but we had to show the Sportsman channel. UM, and I'll tell you what. Whatever we come up with and whatever we put forward involving this monkey and everything, no one there will mess with it. Um cooling about the network where at is they don't screw with us at all. We can run things that are shocking and you know, things you're not gonna see anywhere else because someone would pull it. But we'll run it in UM Thursday's a p m. Or go to meat Eat or dot is it TV, dot vah X or vh X, dot TV Media, dot TV, dot VHX is it. Yeah. If you put in Meteor podcast you get five bucks off any purchase of shows. You can go there and stream them and download them. It's a great way to watch it. The best way to watch is just to watch it when it comes out. If you can't watch when it comes out going download your streaming meat or dot vh x c D or just go to the meat eat or dot com and you'll find all kinds of stuff in all kinds of ways to watch. But these are gonna be special shows, man um. You'll get a glimpse of the lifestyle that has been here a long time. But maybe um won't be here for much longer. I'm not sure. And what's so much content I think here too that will definitely be throwing up some web specials and putting stuff on the YouTube channel. So it's always good to keep up with the Meteor website because there's always a little interesting tidbits that it's a bummer we can't get them into every show, but at least we get to, you know, put them out on the internet something. People can check them out. Marco's Jaguar hunting story. Yeah, all right, we're hoping they we're gonna get picked up by this airplane tomorrow. If not, we'll be doing the podcast tomorrow with the Germanic thank you. You should have pied, You should have plied

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