'BThis is hell,” says Simon Reeve, wading through thigh-high mud somewhere in the Congo Basin. Reeve and his crew estimate he is three days away from the nearest hotel or hospital, traveling at about one mile per hour. Because every step involves climbing, chopping, ducking, or, as is happening now, dragging your way through ankle-sucking swamps.
'Wilderness With Simon Reeve' is a new series about an ingenious explorer who promises an itinerary full of extreme challenges. His hacks to navigate the unforgiving rainforest meet the point. This wilderness is difficult to access, but the rewards of his trek are worth seeing and worth saving.
He and his guide, ranger and conservationist Adams Kasinga, set out in a canoe on the Motava River, then trudge through thick vegetation to meet Baca first. Given their difficult historical interactions, the Baka are an indigenous people whose contact with the West has been limited to polo shirts and football tops acquired through bartering with passing river merchants. , not the questionable isolationists they deserve. With white visitors. When Reeve and Kasinga arrive, they sing, dance, and are excited to welcome the guests. The villagers are lining up to shake Reeve's hand, but each is less wary than the latter.
When Reeve emerged from his hut in the morning, the women of the village picked him out of the branches and leaves—round, like a lush igloo, and sturdy enough to bounce a bowling ball off of. –The village men take him to collect honey. A body camera strapped to one of the tree climbers demonstrated the technique. Grab a smoldering leaf to smoke the bees, reach into the hive and pluck a chewy, dark yellow honeycomb rich in nature's bounty. medicine. Like the spoils of all fool-hunting, the treasure is instinctively shared equally.
Feeling refreshed and energized, Reeve leaves the village and the real work begins. In his previous shows, he has visited all corners of the world but has tended to stick to the same themes. This is a special place, he says, and then shows ordinary people struggling to thrive there because other, more selfish humans have arrived. To exploit them and their land.
Other than some idiots complaining that other tribes keep beating them up, specific people are rarely disenfranchised. Instead, the message is that we should not take for granted the majesty of the Congo Basin, an area the size of Western Europe and home to “billions of beautiful trees beyond imagination.” The Amazon is now chipped and charred, and the Congo is the world's only fully functioning lung left.
And it is under threat. Switching from a boat to a four-wheel-drive vehicle, Reeve and Casinga pass a logging truck carrying a huge trunk of a tree that has been standing for hundreds of years and will soon be used as the feature flooring for loft apartments. I'll pass by. Roads built by logging companies attract more loggers, legal or not, as well as poachers.
Leaving Kasinga with the task of methodically cataloging each timber truck and every felled tree, Reeve moves on to another area of the jungle in search of the area's finest primates. Soon he spotted a black-crested mangabey, a cheeky spiky-furred variety, feeding on nuts in the tree canopy. It's wonderful and unique to this region. A little further on, there is a village where teenagers are pushing carts loaded with dark meat. For sale are antelope, porcupine… and black crested mangabey. Killing and selling animals is the only way children can go to school.
After a small fable about the collision of wild animals and human aspirations, the search for the legendary bonobo begins deep in a protected forest. As a finale, Reeve allows himself a dramatic rendition of a cheap nature film. No one knows how many bonobos there are or exactly where they live, so you'll almost certainly never find them…wait, there they are! An adult lies sunbathing as Reeve tingles with pleasure and watches from a few yards away.
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Brushing away bugs from his eyes, so many that it looks like he's wiping mud, Reeve faces the camera, even though there may be tears. “Beauty and wonder still exist,” he says. “I am in awe of this wilderness and the life that still exists within it. This is one of the last great bastions of wild nature on earth.” It may be much closer to a traditional conservation film than its predecessor, but its message is less specific and surprising. But its message, a reminder not to give up on the hard work of preserving the wonders we have left, could not be more important.
