Hello fellow Steemit fans. I am still exited about the Next Social-Blockchain Revolution and the Steemit group. This is about camping in my younger days

Camping and survival part one

As you could read in my introduction, I am a survival fan.
Survival however is such a big word.
To me survival means staying alive with the means and knowledge you have and not necessarily in the wilderness .
I watch many survival films on Youtube and in my opinion most of these guys will not survive for long in the (tropical) jungle.
I have learned to do, make and fix things. In my younger days most people did.
This post is more about camping in the jungle.

Born and raised a country boy in the tropics, at a very early age I started I started camping, hunting and fishing on our own property which was pretty large.

About 4 miles from our property, there was a large area of many square miles that was still a jungle and no people lived there yet. It was believed that area was haunted because of the killing of several black slaves back in the eighteen hundreds.
There was a main road that crossed a small 100 feet wide very deep river that flowed into the major 1 mile wide river.
I had to walk parallel to the shores of this small river to get to my camp.
Nowadays it’s suburbanized.

Most of my friends were not the type to go into the wilderness with me, so I mostly ended up with one friend or alone in this jungle.

My late father taught me lots of useful things at a very early age.
At eight I knew how to reload a 16 and 12 gauge cartridge.
My father was a very wise men and he told me that if he didn’t teach me how, I might blow up myself so it was better to teach me to do things the right way instead of forbidding them.

With the help of my father I set up a base camp (after convincing and proving that I knew how to survive. I was tested in so many ways) in this jungle area.
I improved my camp every time I went there and brought more stuff to the camp. It was about 3 hours walking distance.
After setting up base camp my father borrowed a boat from a friend so we could carry larger and heavier items over the river into the creek.
With this one and only trip by boat we brought a steel drum coated with tar on the inside and the outside to hold rainwater. Also 2 galvanized buckets one to carry water and a very large one, some gravel and a bag with white sand to make a water filter. Charcoal I made on the spot. Pots, wire mesh welded in a frame grill and some bricks to cook and grill, a few gallons of petroleum for my storm lanterns and other useful items.

The First time before I had a path cut open it took us more then 6 hours (from the main road) walking parallel to the narrow but very deep River.
The shelter was very sturdy and for protection during the night we had 2 inch bamboo poles all around the shelter about 4 inches apart and tied to the structure. This would give larger animals a hard time getting in, but was still open for good ventilation.
The location was at the point where a smaller creek flowed into the River, which was ideal for camping . There was also a lot of bamboo growing in the area.
About a mile further I discovered a path the animals used that was ideal to set some traps.
At that time there was plenty of fish, birds and small to medium game.
The anjoemara was my favorite fish. Very often over 25 lbs.

There was one setback however, there were many poisonous snakes like the Bushmaster and a some jaguars in this area.

To secure the camp for snakes I brought diesel oil and one of those then modern Flit manual spray pump and sprayed the ground around the camp in a circle about 2 meters wide. The snakes would not cross that barrier.

The whole camp area was stripped clean so I could oversee a large area and especially the shore of the smaller creek where I made a small platform . I burned everything so it was really open and clean.
I also made sure, there was no risk of falling branches, dead trees etc.
Every time I went there, one of the first things I did was clean up my camp.
The very first time I brought a leave rake and left it there so it was easy to keep the campsite clean.
Further I used a lot and I mean a lot dried branches all around the camp so everything that came too close to my camp would step on them and I would hear them crack ( I am a very light sleeper). I also installed 3 tripwires made of nylon fishing line on different heights and distances , connected to some tin cans in 2 corners so I would know from which direction (east or west) an animal or human was approaching my camp.
The beginning of the path was kept very much camouflaged to keep other people from finding my camp. There were several paths that lead to the main path after half an hour walking. By using a different path every time they weren’t ever discovered because within a few days it was all grown over.

In my next post I will tell you more.

Keep in touch!

Paul