Six Days in Machete Heaven
This past week Giuliano Toniolo and I took off for six days in the Mata Atlantica. Mata Atlantica is the east coast rainforest of Brazil. The area we were in was about an hour south of where we live in Belo Horizonte.
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Giuliano is starting up his own survival school here in Central Brazil and it was great to get out to the bush with someone who not only has the passion to chop where few will go but also contribute a solid base of experience to the adventure. This guy rides for the brand.
I have to say we got our butts kicked on this trip. The Mata Atlantica is a very beautiful, but inhospitable place, the kind of terrain that most people only ever view from a prepared trail near the hotel. We were scouting out a possible location for future survival training both for ourselves and for the groups we take to the bush. I doubt we will get back to this place with a group because it was just too brutal to take people who are untrained. If you push into this terrain it pushes back hard.
The place was basically a very isolated ridge surrounded on three sides by very deep ravines which practically guarantee there is nobody there. Just getting in and out was an ordeal and the mountain itself is covered by very thick bush.
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I really do feel privileged to be able to do a trip like this for the cost of two hours’ drive time and a week’s rations of Ramen noodles and instant oatmeal. This was a challenging trip for us both. We shot ALOT of video on the trip. I have it edited into 12 videos that I’ll be putting up on my channel in the coming weeks. The videos are a mix of tutorial info and the chronology of the trip.
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I have the first video up now; it’s an introduction to the area and the video series. This was the kind of trip in which you strap on the machete in the morning and peel your fingers off it at night. It was six days of chopping, hot days, chilly nights, ants, mosquitoes, sweat bees, blazing sun, and rain.
YouTube - Machete Heaven Intro
I hope you guys enjoy these videos as much as we did shooting them. Some of the time we were too involved with the business of getting through to shoot video. Did I mention we got our butts kicked?
Mac
