Shipwrecked: Surviving The Cook Islands

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Photo 1: Nick works on his chicken trap

There is very little that can really prepare you for a survival situation. There is even less that can be done when you haven’t picked out your own kit and you have no idea what’s happening. Being dumped on an unfamiliar desert island is certainly exciting but not without trepidation. So it was with some curiosity and caution that I surveyed my new surroundings of Shipwrecked 2008’s third island, better known to the locals as Muri Tapua. I soon learned what the score was; I was here alone until further notice, this was survival island which meant no luxuries: soap, loo paper, mirrors, building supplies, matches and above all protein. So this is why I was found to be Shipwrecked’s first survival expert, most of the items I could happily do without except protein and this proved to be the most important of all…

Getting acquainted

The island itself did hold some promise; on my preliminary excursions there was an abundance of coconuts…great! To say that I was alone isn’t entirely accurate, 14 chickens, 3 pigs and hundreds of crabs also shared my beautiful little Atoll. But that was about it. Cameramen, soundmen and runners aside, being on your own with an entire island at your disposal is something money simply cannot buy and this was essentially my own paradise that I could mould into whatever I wanted, I suspected others may come along, but when?

No matches? No problem I have made fire by friction in the past and my first day on the island was no exception. Coconut husk makes superb tinder and there was no shortage. For the rest of my time on the island I was given a Knife which I had handpicked before leaving (a mora training knife) and a fire steel sparking block which, to be honest, is better than matches as it still works when wet. So with a fire built and on the go I set about building my shelter for the night and settling into my rations for one, a handful of rice, a carrot, banana and an orange. Nice!

The Crabs

To those of you who are under the impression Shipwrecked is a jolly on an island paradise as many people think, you are strongly mistaken. For example, I lost a stone and a half in a month…and I didn’t have a lot to lose. The third island was very different from the better known Tiger and Shark islands, we didn’t have the luxury of tinned Tuna and Lambs tongue, we had to get our own protein. The first of mine literally fell into my lap…a good size crab had decided to get cosy with me on my first night and was promptly dispatched for breakfast, these crabs tasted incredible and there was no shortage judging by the amount of holes and burrows all over the place. Crab did become a regular feature on the menu and could be found in and around the beach on most nights with the aid of a lantern and a spear. The trick was to sneak up on their holes where they would wait until danger passed, all that was needed was to approach slowly and spear them through the head. Moonlit nights were the best: the crabs would hit the beaches for some carnal pleasure only to end up in our cooking pot.

How to kill a Pig on a desert island

Photo 2: Preparing the pig oven

My second day and my last day alone was a pretty interesting one. How to kill a pig, Cook Island style. The experience was not something I would recommend, but I am glad I did it. Out here there are no abattoirs; it is all hands on. The first step was to fashion a ‘Tagger’ or to us a sharp steak made from the redwood tree on the island, which is a hard wood that can be whittled into a razor sharp dagger. With pig in hand, one foot pinning its body down and tagger in the other I then pushed my weapon into the pigs heart from under its right armpit. This was a strange situation firstly the primitive method of dispatch, the cameras and sound guys all trained on what I was doing and lastly but by no means the least…the noise. When a pig is picked up it squeals like you wouldn’t believe and it’s not pleasant. The noise it makes when stabbed in the heart is even worse and I thought it would haunt me for the rest of my days. The other common method of slaughtering a pig is to smash it between the eyes with a hammer to knock it out and then slit its throat…you can see why I chose the other option!

The Pigs

The remaining two pigs were aptly named Bacon and Chops. This was to keep in mind what they were there for. I had no problem with getting to know the pigs fully aware that they would end up in my stomach, but others might have, so to all new arrivals it was made clear that bacon and chops were not pets and were strictly for fattening up and eating. Out in the pacific islands the method for cooking pigs is really quite cunning. Once skinned, gutted and jointed, they are placed in an underground oven, which consists of digging a large pit, building a fire in it and placing plenty of basalt rocks on top. These rocks get extremely hot and retain the heat, so placing your bits of pig on the rocks, covering with leaves and sand and leaving well alone for 5 hours will guarantee you one hell of a meal.

Photo 3: Chops & Bacon

Everything was eaten, the cheeks, ears, liver and kidneys and all of it incredible. The liver being the first of our porky treats; fried on our pan lid and scoffed for lunch. Even the fat was boiled up the next day and the fat would set and last for weeks, ideal for frying fish and carrots. I like to think that we had some of the happiest pigs in the South Pacific. Bacon and chops were the ultimate free-range pigs; they had the whole jungle to run around in, beaches for rooting around (although it was usually done under our table!) and more than enough coconuts, which we would happily chop up for them, taking half for us and leaving the rest for them. I also found out something I didn’t know about pigs; one day on the beach, I saw the crew boat coming in and chops running down the beach towards them, as the boat anchored a good 10 feet offshore, chops swam out to the boat gave a quick ‘Oink’ and swam back again. Impressive piggy!

The Chickens

The chickens, oh the chickens…Cook Island’s poultry is quite different from your average English farmyard bird. These are the Steve McQueen’s of the chicken world, I always thought of them as flightless birds, which is true if you clip their wings, these had no such manicure and could fly the height of a palm tree. They were also impressive escapologists and we must have lost at least three or four between taking them from the trap to removing their heads. To catch these chickens took some work and short of the old Neanderthal trick of taking whatever suitable weapon came to hand and trying to corner them in a bush (which seldom led to any capture), we had to come up with something so cunning it would fool a chicken.

Photo 4: A trapped chicken

The chicken traps we built were just that. It took two efforts to come up with the perfect model, mark one  was too big and looked more like a medieval fortress than a trap, it did have some success, bagging both pigs in one fell swoop! The other problem was bait; coconut was good, except the pigs would sniff it out and wreck the trap, rice was just as effective and the pigs didn’t bother with it, although it meant using some of our precious rations, it was worth it for a chicken. Our traps were fairly straightforward, built out of thin redwood strips to form a cage tied together with broken down rope, they looked so Robinson Crusoe they couldn’t fail. Then to the science bit: these traps were self-setting, this meant not having to sit for hours in sizzling temperatures waiting for a chicken to enter the trap and then pull your bit of cord attached to the stick holding the cage up. We could set our trap and leave it to do its work, this was achieved by using two small stakes with about three feet of dental floss tied between them, the stakes were then placed in the ground at the end of the trap and looped around the centre of two sticks balancing end to end (each end notched so they fit together) which held up the other end of the trap. The dental floss therefore acted as a trip wire, so when Mr or Mrs chicken came scratching around to feast on the scattered rice inside the trap…gotcha! All that was necessary was to check the traps regularly and rebate when needed, there was one day when we managed to get three and had the most fantastic spread for supper.

How to kill a chicken on a desert island

Photo 5: Cooking the chicken

Dealing with a chicken on a desert island is a bit different than at home. Sending the chicken to meet its maker was simple enough, one person to hold the bird down, the other to stretch out the neck and slice through it with a sharp knife…over in a matter of seconds. Almost everyone had a go at killing a chicken; some of the third island ladies were more than up for the challenge! Processing the dead bird had to be done as soon as it had been killed, meat spoils so quickly in the tropics. First the bird was dunked in a pot of boiling water for about 6 seconds to loosen the feathers when plucking. They were then gutted carefully as to not break the bile gland and spoil the meat. Liver and heart were taken and mounted on a skewer, animal flesh/offal was a precious commodity and we didn’t waste a bit.

How to extract salt from sea water

The cooking side was often down to me, being a chef I had chosen my luxury item very sensibly, spices, one tub of hot curry powder and another of garlic powder mixed with all-purpose seasoning. There was no chance I was going to spend three months eating bland tasteless food, so I had also come out with another trick up my sleeve…salt. We were on a desert island surrounded by sea; seawater generally has 13.5% salt content. All that was needed to extract this from the sea was to build a raging fire and place a cooking pot half filled with sea water and keep it on a rolling boil until it all moisture had almost evaporated, at which point a small cup of fresh water was added to finish it off. The pot was then left to dry in the sun and after an hour it was scraped out and placed in a jam jar. Salt production was an ongoing task with up to three batches made per week, weird as it may sound, for some bizarre reason the salt tasted even saltier than the salt you used to at home. We used salt on virtually every meal that was had, save breakfast (doesn’t really go with rice pudding and banana), this was no problem in terms of cholesterol as our increased salt rations were sweated out almost immediately as well as aiding in prevention of dehydration.

That about sums up what was available on the island, next time we will go to the water’s edge and look to what the mighty pacific has to offer the hungry castaway!