I am in the jungle. And I have absolutely no experience in South America. I've never set foot there. So, I went in the Amazon to look at a specific community in Bolivia. And more specifically in a settlement called Anachere. We went to look at the Tsimané. And the Tsimané, they are about 2,500 people living in the Amazon. We went up river for about two days in dug-out canoes. After, you know, two-three days flights, buses, cars, whatever. We follow the Maniqui River right here which is a tributary of the Amazon. And eventually after two days we got here.

This is the Nate family welcoming us with SpongeBob. You see SpongeBob? They live in small family settlements. They will have one settlement here. And then you need to walk for 15-20 minutes, half-an-hour through the jungle, up the river to reach another settlement. And you know it's very dense jungle. They usually live in these bamboo houses with palm leaf roofs. They used to be fulltime hunter-gatherer, only relying on hunting and gathering. Now, about 200 years ago missionaries came there and introduced them to cultivation, to agriculture. And so they grow a lot of plantain and banana a bit of rice as well. And corn, which is originally from that part of the world. And they do slash and burn agriculture. They burn, they grow right next to their settlement.

Also there is a lot of plantain. They eat so much plantain, it's very dangerous because, you know, you're like, I'm going to skid on that, you know, these banana skins and stuff everywhere. And they take the plantain and they throw it directly in the fire. Or they leave the skin on or they shave it there's all kinds of things. Let's go for a little drive down the river.

And so, the family gathers around, often, the fireplace like this. This is the kitchen, this is it. You know, just an open space. The youngsters will be around and often the older men they are going out hunting. And everybody hopes for some meat to come back. But I am sitting there and I see the two girls like standing up and they're just leaving. I am like, “Whoa, where are they are going?” You know. I need to know anything what's going on. I don't know, they're just going into the jungle. I'm like, dude, but there's like snakes and all this stuff. Yeah, but that is their home. This is, for them, like going around the block here. And so they go out in the jungle and they start foraging. They're just, you know, sitting there and they just get up at some point from camp and just start walking in the jungle let's go and find something to bite on. And found this palm tree and started to eat palm fruit which is full of good stuff. And I looked around, I saw these nice red berries. I'm like, “oh, this looks good.” They're like, “you eat that, you're dead.” - I'm like “okay.” So they know, I don't know. They are incredibly intimate, this really impressed me. To see especially youngsters go out like this. It's really beautiful.

They often go with dogs. They have a lot of-- a few dogs lying around that they use for hunting. And there's a lot of rodents or you know, various animals that live underground. So they hunt it. When the dogs find something, they go with the machete to try to clear out the opening to help the dog and find the animal. My room was in the far right there. I'll show you because it's such a nice spot. So, this is it, this is my bedroom. Cool stuff, there's a minibar. Let me show you.

Oh! Computer inside. I was miserable in Bolivia. I was really miserable. There's so many mosquitoes, it is incredibly hot. I''m more like a, you know, yak high-altitude type than monkey-jungle thing. So, next day we go down the river. We want to go to next camp and you know, what happened is... This is the real evolution of diet when you start feeding your camera with rice. I fell, I fell in the river my camera went fully into the river, and... I had a back-up, thanks God for the back-ups, so I could still shoot. But it survived, so I put that in a zip lock with rice. So, if it ever happens you all know the trick with phone and stuff, and it worked. A week later, ten days later, I switched it on, it worked. You know we ended up going up river. I have changed my camera, another camera, thanks God.

And we walked into this beautiful scene where this old man, the older man we saw him before in his plantations standing there same again, I went back. I love to go back to the same spot because he is at ease. You know he is washing, he was stark naked but you know, he's seen me before talked to him before, he just lets me there. And all this butterfly flying around. You can see the body of one of the oldest men I met there and who has been hunter-gatherer all his life. That would give this kind of body. He is over 70, still very active, still physical because yeah, he has to walk every day to feed himself. You know, his kids will help him.

But they go hunting. And so I went hunting, next day with his son. They brought back food, finally. They brought this armadillo that they cut up in pieces and... It tastes very much like chicken, like anything. They boil the meat. They also had this coati, which is a bit similar to badger. They singe it in the fire straight in. Protein is very important, protein. This is the only way for them to get it. They don't get animals every day. Yeah, if they get that once a week, they'll be happy. And then they do the gutting, often the kids do the gutting. The guys come back from a long day some time the whole day in the jungle. They are exhausted, they arrive back to camp they bring the food. They sit down, the women prepare fire and then the kids are given the task to go and prepare the animal. Everywhere, mostly everywhere I went it's often the kids who do that task. And so the pieces of meat are taken, there is plantain that is shaven and boiled, a bit of salt in there. And they have this kind of porridge. Quite tasty result in that plate there.

So, stomach full, you know, feeling quite content I returned and I knew I was quite happy. I knew what my next destination was.