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I am slithering across the forest floor, stealthily, silently, like a pit viper perhaps? But that would make me the predator and I think I’m the prey here. Actually – to be honest – slithering and stealthily are wishful thinking; it’s more like trying to creep, a little stooped, in an attempt to be less visible to Bear Grylls, who is hunting me. Although – further honesty alert! – he’s not really hunting me. We’ll come to that.
I’m trying to remember what Grylls said in his brief about how to avoid detection. A lot of things beginning with S: sound obviously, though it’s hard to be quiet here because the forest floor is covered in dry leaves and twigs. Smell is another; wish I’d gone easier on the Lynx Jungle Fresh – hopefully Bear is upwind. Shadow, silhouette and shine are also no-nos, some of which Grylls himself helped with by rubbing dirt on my face.
Time for some explanation. Grylls has a new TV show, Celebrity Bear Hunt, on Netflix. Twelve celebs – including a Spice Girl, a Saturday, a Strictly judge, an Inbetweener and a former tennis player – are holed up in a beach house on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. After instruction from Grylls, they are given tasks – build a shelter, jump off a moving boat, that kind of thing. If they fail, they get released into the Bear Pit, an area of terrifying and dangerous jungle, where they must evade capture as Grylls hunts them down. It’s the Scouts meets The Hunger Games, with Holly “Right, deep breath” Willoughby presenting.
Netflix has invited a few journalists and influencers (I like to think I straddle the genres) to Costa Rica during filming, to try a task, have a chat with the main man, and – crucially – experience a Bear Hunt. Yes, I have come to Costa Rica to be hunted, in the jungle, by Bear Grylls. If Mel B, Una Healy, Shirley Ballas, Joe Thomas and Boris Becker can, then I can too.
I know, a long way to go for a stunt, and there are questions about whether it warrants the flight. But here’s my lame attempt at justification: I spent some time in Costa Rica in my 20s, teaching English, and here was an opportunity to return for the first time. I remember a few days in Santa Rosa national park on the Pacific coast, watching turtles lay eggs on the beach, sharks cruising in the river mouth, crocodiles fishing in the shallows. I actually quite fancy my chances against an Old Etonian TV presenter … Oh, but on arrival, we are told that Grylls won’t be hunting us after all, due to the heavy filming schedule, and “some safety concerns”, though it’s apparently safe enough for Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. (Flamboyant room-changer LLB is also a contestant. Completing the lineup: Steph McGovern, Leomie Anderson, Kola Bokinni, Danny Cipriani, Big Zuu and Lottie Moss). We are promised a chat with Grylls, and taken to see the camp where the celebrities are living – while they’re off doing a task, so we don’t meet any.
The camp is lovely, like a rustic yoga retreat. But I’m wondering why I had to have a rigorous medical – and every travel vaccination under the sun – to tour a beach house then sit in an air-conditioned portacabin.
To be fair, the show does sound fun. I’m looking forward to Mel B’s encounter with a crocodile (who was more scared?) and Becker opening up about being banged up. It’s a big operation. Millions of Netflix dollars, a crew of 300. We visit some mudflats for a task – dismantle a shelter, then build it again. Mucky, not too tricky, I’m prepared, I don’t give up, I survive. C’mon, take me to that Pit …
No, first a briefing from the health and safety team. Things to watch out for: snakes, spiders, scorpions, ticks, death apple trees … bloody hell, it is beginning to sound ominous. We put on helmets and harnesses, and a veteran named Scottie in full combat gear leads us into the Bear Pit.
We walk for a few yards and pause by a map. Suddenly I feel a tap on my shoulder … Oh, hello! Bear Grylls has snuck up, wearing black and carrying a coiled rope. He tells us about the stuff beginning with S that will give us away – sound, smell etc – before rubbing dirt on our faces. “To break up your shape, take the shine off you, as well as protect you from ants and mosquitoes.”
Not that it matters, now that he’s not actually going to be hunting us. He does have time for a quick stroll through the Bear Pit, talking as we walk, hitting us with the Bear Grylls shtick. “I always want to be building people to learn skills …. Men and women want to be alert in life, be on the front foot … You’ve got thousands of years of primal stuff driving through you, these are natural skills for you.”
When I ask if we’ve gone soft, the so-called snowflake generation, he talks about mettle. “It’s a muscle. If we try nothing, never step out of our comfort zone, your mettle muscle gets weak.” There is a snowflake state of mind, but it’s not generational or encapsulated by young people. “As chief scout [he led the young person’s group until July 2024] I see young people I’m incredibly impressed by – resilient, motivated, positive, determined to change the world, combat climate change, start businesses. They’re not just going to coast. But if you don’t get any training in resilience you get weak.”
Do we need survival skills – building shelters or crawling through the forest – in the modern world, though? They are transferable, he says. “It’s a reflection of how to be tough in everyday life.” We come to a trap that has been set in the path, covered with leaves, which Grylls demonstrates using a young influencer. Stand there, and … whoosh! Suddenly there’s an influencer hanging in the air in a net, like a trawler’s haul. Not so influential up there, are you?
There’s a lesson here, says Grylls: don’t get track happy. “The easy path never leads anywhere good.” He also has a thing about people living in green, amber and red. “Green is walking along looking at your phone, not concentrating, someone could be walking past naked and you wouldn’t notice. It’s how most people live – but we didn’t become the dominant species by living in green. Then you have amber, when you’re more alert, aware and looking around you. And red which is high intensity, like a soldier going through the door of a building. You can’t live in red for long, like 30 seconds. This place is about trying to live alert, when to push, when to hold back.”
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Is it though? The Bear Pit doesn’t seem that wild or terrifying; we’ve walked along a path for a few minutes from the road, it’s scrubby rather than thick forest. I think he senses our disappointment – that we’ve been put on the easy path and it’s not going anywhere good. “Do you want to have a little experience of stalking?”
Yes please Bear. We need to hurry, he’s not got much time, he’ll go over there by that tree on the path, we’ll try to sneak up on him without being seen. “Use the cover, be smart, I’m going to see who gets the closest to me, without me spotting you,” he says. “Like Grandmother’s Footsteps …”
Seriously?! I’ve had every health check available, been vaccinated to the eyeballs, and come all the way to Costa bloody Rica to play Grandmother’s Footsteps!
That’s when I meet a man called Diego behind a tree – who agrees to swap headwear, giving me his green cap, which has bits of foliage sticking out of it. A bike mechanic from San Jose, he’s been hired to make sure Mel B et al are OK. Quite a few of the trees have people behind them. Oh, and here’s a fence. You know what, this Bear Pit is less scary than the London park at the bottom of my road, and considerably smaller. One of the health and safety team tells me it’s 500 or 600 metres long, and 300 metres wide at its widest, and it’s someone’s private land. “Not jungle by any means,” admits Scottie.
I know, it shouldn’t be a massive surprise: reality TV isn’t quite as it seems. And I’m sure it will look the part on the telly. But I am shocked at just how unwild the Bear Pit is. It’s a little strip of privately owned dry woodland, just off the road to the beach. There’s a house just over there – I can hear the dog.
Even wearing Diego’s leafy headgear, my lame stoop and underfoot crunching mean I don’t get very close and I’m soon spotted. “Behind the tree,” Grylls calls, from the path. The influencer who a short time ago was hanging in the air in a net wins, proving perhaps that gen Z has plenty of mettle (or is good at Grandmother’s Footsteps). A couple of all-terrain vehicles arrive (there’s also a track into the Bear Pit) to take us the short way back to the production base, air-conditioned cabins and a fridge full of cold drinks.
Some of the celebrities are due on site for an actual Bear Hunt. We’re herded politely but smartly on to a bus and whisked away to avoid any unscheduled encounters.
The following day, the flight out of Guanacaste Airport takes us up the Pacific coast and over Santa Rosa national park. It’s a vast carpet of green where the trees don’t have health and safety people hiding behind them; where the squawking, chatter and howling comes not from crew radios and celebrities on the hunt for fame, but from macaws and monkeys. Where the crackle of breaking twigs is not Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen crashing through the undergrowth but a herd of peccaries on the prowl.
Celebrity Bear Hunt is on Netflix on Wednesday 5 February.
