I braved snakes, 10ft crocs & ‘death apples’ for Holly Willoughby’s Bear Hunt…it makes I’m A Celeb look like Butlin’s
WHEN faced with a bear you have two options – stand perfectly still and pray it ignores you or make enough noise you scare it off.
Or in my case, you run like hell and hope for the best.
But I didn’t have to face down your regular sharp-clawed grisly, this one has travelled the globe hunting his prey and isn’t easily distracted once he’s locked on to his target.
That’s because I flew to Costa Rica to go toe to toe with TV tough guy Bear Grylls after being challenged by the man himself to see if I have what it takes to beat him.
I’ve joined the 49-year-old on the set of his new Netflix series Celebrity Bear Hunt.
Presented by Holly Willoughby, the show sees a host of famous faces including Spice Girl Mel B, Strictly judge Shirley Ballas and controversial tennis star Boris Becker, ditch their glamorous lives in the UK to battle it out in the forests of Costa Rica.
Living together in a beachside camp, they have to take on challenges based around survival skills. Win and they go back to camp, lose and they end up being thrown in the Bear Pit, a large section of jungle that is so remote it looks like the dumping ground for a serial killer.
Inside the Bear Pit, the name of the game is to locate ‘exits’ from the jungle before he catches you, or evade him long enough he calls off his hunt.
If you beat him, you live to fight another day. But if you lose, it’s up to Bear whether he hands you a plane ticket home and boots you out of the competition.
Naturally, he hasn’t made it easy for anyone. Inside the jungle he’s set up elaborate traps to snare his prey when they least expect it.
And as fans around the country prepare to enjoy watching their favourite stars sweat in the Central American sunshine, I got to discover exactly what it’s like for them inside Bear’s hunting ground.
Spoiler alert, it’s truly terrifying!
Before flying out there I couldn’t help but wonder whether it was going to be just another TV sham, faked for the cameras with the celebs knowing exactly what to do to bring the drama.
But as soon as I set foot inside the Celebrity Bear Hunt compound any thoughts I was going to breeze through this experience went straight out the window.
Men in military camouflage are everywhere and when crew find out what I’m doing there’s a look of pity in their eyes.
I should have known this trip wasn’t going to be a walk in the park.
Before I even got on the plane I, like all the celebs on the show, had to go through a full physical with a specialist London doctor who took my bloods, tested my lungs, checked my heart and rated how quickly I started sweating during an impromptu work out.
I guess they wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to keel over and die on their watch.
Thankfully I was given a clean bill of health and the medical green light to pack my bags.
But before that I had to visit a vaccination centre to have shots to protect me from a host of diseases including rabies.
I was warned to avoid touching the local wildlife, particularly bats that hang from the trees like creepy little vampires. Safe to say I’d be staying well clear of those.
‘Everything wants to kill you’
Arriving at the compound I was whisked to the start point of the Bear Pit to meet Bear before the biggest game of cat and mouse would start.
While the celebrities will be seen walking through Jurassic Park style gates for their stint in the pit, the reality is that’s just a sexy shot for TV, the real start point is down a rugged track off the side of a road less than a mile away.
Determined to make sure I looked the part – and stood any kind of chance against him – Bear covered me in makeshift camouflage.
Only the good stuff for me. He poured his water into the mud on the floor, mixed it around and then slathered it on my face, bugs and all.
“You look like a ninja”, he told me. Obviously more confident of my capabilities than I was.
After an unnerving pep talk by Scotty, Bear’s military-trained sidekick of 20 years, the game is on.
Bear disappears into the forest with a spring in his step and I’m left to my own devices, utterly terrified. Not just of making a fool of myself in front of the TV star, but of all the things that could kill me inside the Bear Pit.
Ahead of going on the run, the safety team had warned me the area is home to snakes, spiders and something ominously called a death apple tree – every part of it is toxic and can burn your skin if you happen to touch it.
Basically, everything wants to kill you and hearing there are ambulances nearby along with people armed with anti-venom injections, fills me with horror.
To make me feel even more scared the Bear Pit is also where a ten foot crocodile, who Bear has named “Juvenile Julie”, calls home.
Apparently she’s young and this makes her more territorial and aggressive. And this is not like I’m A Celebrity where the crocs have their jaws taped shut.
This is real life where I could be Julie’s dinner because I’ve entered her home. She’s that unpredictable that one of the show’s safety team always has eyes on her in case she decides she wants a human for her supper.
Adrenaline spiking I ran into the forest, no clue which direction I was heading in.
I’m usually good with directions but the colourful map I’d been shown ahead of going on the run, which marked the exits I was aiming for, had gone from my mind.
It’s not as if the jungle has signposts helpfully telling you which way to go, nor could I rely on my phone because the place is so remote there’s no signal.
And there’s a real uneasy feeling that washes over you when you know someone is after you and you can’t see them.
The crew, including the show’s photographer, had melted into the background of the jungle and I couldn’t see or hear any sign of them.
Before we started Bear warned me about being “track happy” and following natural looking paths that cut through the forest.
But with a sense of panic pumping through me, that’s easier said than done. The path of least resistance seemed much more inviting.
After some time I found myself charging along a dried up river bed, hopping from stone to stone because I was too scared to put my foot on the leaves surrounding them, in case I stood on a snake.
The forest was intense, the temperature was nearing 40 degrees at the main camp but felt double that thanks to the trees and undergrowth.
In a matter of minutes I was covered in sweat and the mud Bear had put on my face had run into my eyes.
Bear disappears into the forest with a spring in his step and I’m left to my own devices, utterly terrified.
Katie Bagely
Anyone watching this series who thinks the celebs are primed about where to go are truly mistaken.
You really are left to your own devices. The camera crew are in special hiding spots you can’t pick out unless you are a commando for real, and the jungle is savage, it’s not been created just for TV.
There was a constant pulsing noise which I quickly realised was the hum of bugs, and howler monkeys that live in the area make this weird roar which really does put you on edge.
The entire time I was there I felt like everything around me wanted to kill me and being totally honest, I began hoping Bear would come and save me.
As I walked down a path made by some kind of animal too big and scary to think about, I started to think I’d actually been abandoned, there was no sign of a human anywhere.
A real sense of panic began to set in – and I jumped out of my skin as a hand grabbed my shoulder.
Bear had come up behind me so quietly I didn’t sense his presence until he had grabbed me.
“I knew you’d be track happy”, he told me gleefully as he bound my hands like I was a prisoner of war.
In one last humiliating act, he tied me to a tree and walked off back into the jungle to start hunting his next prey.
I couldn’t help but laugh, a sense of relief that this ordeal was over for me, but I was also left wondering if the celebs would fare any better than I did.
Bear said he wants this series to show there’s an action hero in all of us.
If I did anything on this trip, I proved him wrong.