Naked and Afraid Recap: Season 3, Episode 1 Namibia

Naked and afraid

Naked-and-Afraid-Namibia-1Oh Naked and Afraid, how I missed you and your totally loony participants! Honestly, who would willingly spend their vacation time roughing it in the buff? Thankfully, the good folks at Discovery and Naked and Afraid find these willing survivalist and point a few cameras at them for our entertainment. Let’s meet this week’s crazies…

Naked and AfraidLindsie Leitelt, age 30. Homeschooling mom of 2 from California.
Lindsie does endurance races, enjoys hikes and camping. Her footage shows her mountain biking, so she has to be strong and possess the mental toughness of a competitor. She’s in great physical shape. She looks like a bad-ass, but she admits she’s unfamiliar with desert climates.

Naked and AfraidLuke McLaughlin, age 27. Wilderness field instructor who works with at-risk youth from Salt Lake City, UT.
Looks like Jesus; he’s a scrubby guy with a righteous beard, he looks like he’s already been in the wilderness for 21 days.
Luke says he teaches Bow drilling on a daily basis, so Lindsie and Luke should be enjoying a hot bath momentarily.

Survival item
Lindsie chose a pot, but “Pot” is generous. It’s a tin camp cup at best.
Luke chose a Tomahawk
This season, the maps look less like something my 7 year-old drew


Poll: What would you chose as your survival item on Naked and Afraid?


Scary stuff about Namibia
Razor-sharp acacia thorns
Black mamba, wait, Kobe Bryant is here?
Large cats like leopards
Chacma baboons

Day 1
Baboons will f you up. Damn, those are some dirty baboon teeth.
Lindsie quote of the show, “I’m used to balls in my face.”
Luke and Lindsie drink some nasty water that looks as crystal clear as hot chocolate

Who knew? I always assumed that the PSR was a non-scientific measurement created in the editing bay by TV folks. It’s actually given by someone with 30 years of wilderness experience. I wonder what survival pro’s PSR would be?
Luke’s PSR is 8.1 (FYI, he’s 6 foot 185 lbs)
Lindsie’s PSR is 7.6 ( She’s 5’7” and 134lbs)

Naked and Afraid
Oh deer…

The twosome comes upon a kudu (deer), that they think died of rabies (yikes). In my world, you avoid animals with rabies like the plague. Literally, since rabies is kinda a plague and that’s how zombies start. And while Luke is man-handling the deer’s mouth, the narrator tells us where rabies is located in an animal: in the animal’s brain, spinal cord/spinal fluid, and salivary glands, which is of course, in the mouth that Luke is poking.

After they find a cave filled with giant fur-filled poop, they decide that that’s the perfect place to spend the night. I’d not want to be sleeping in a baboon latrine.

Naked-and-Afraid-Namibia-3While Luke saws the skin off of the rabid deer, Lindsie pulls grass and shoves it in the cave. And since this is Naked and Afraid, of course Namibia is experiencing an unseasonable cold snap, and it’s about to rain. Does N&A wait for a location to be having epically terrible weather before sending in a crew to shoot there? Because for me, fully clothed person, 60degrees sounds awesome. But for naked folks, that’s a tad nippy.

Luke grabs his meat blanket, and he and Lindsie like skin to skin, covered with skin and they settle in for a night of no sleep

About 3am, they hear baboons grunting outside of the cave. Maybe one of the baboons has tummy troubles and wants to use his baboon potty.

Day 2
They find big-ass baboon tracks.
It’s only 61 degrees during the day, Brr!! They sit in the cave and wait for warmer weather.

Day 3
Luke and Lindsie make a shelter instead of fortifying the cave. It’s not bad, but let’s hope for no rain.

Luke gets some sinew from the rabid deer to make a bow drill. And look like a champ. Just as I’m declaring him the Season 3 fire whisperer, the sinew breaks and there is no ember.

Day 4
Luke heads back to the rotting beast to get more sinew, but now, every fly in Africa has descended on this sweet, sweet meal and has deposited a lifetime of fly babies on the rotting corpse. I guess flies don’t care about rabies. It looks like a nightmare from Fear Factor; waves of maggots and flies are covering every putrid inch of the kudu. My brain is vomiting, and I’m pretty sure I see vomit in Luke’s beard.

Naked and afraidBack at camp, Lindsie offers up some of her hair for cordage. Luke tomahawks out a chunk and then gets greedy, and says that it would work better if it was braided. Instead of insisting that Luke braids what he was given, Rapunzel offers up more hair for scalping.

And want to head how magically the tresses work at making fire? They don’t. And Luke and Lindsie shiver all night long.

Day 5
Luke and Lindsie are very shivery.

Naked and Afraid keeps showing shots of majestic African animals like elephants and Giraffes. Why don’t they do dig around in their poop for some undigested berries?

Luke eats a tasty grub. His best quote form the episode, “A bit earthy, subtle hints of poo that I taste.” Lindsie finds some raisins on a bush and instead of gobbling them like a pig (Ahem, I’m talking ‘bout you, grub-eater) she shares with Luke.

Day 7
Now Luke tries to use a thin strip of the pelt on the bowdrill. No dice. Bow drills 0, Africa, 3.
When Lindsie says she wishes that she could be of a bigger help to Luke, he makes some passive aggressive comments and agrees with her and basically says, “Yeah, I wish you were a bigger help too. All the ideas are coming from me.” Didn’t she have the idea to use her long, silken hair instead of your nasty dreadlocks? And didn’t she find the Kudu?

Later, Luke tries the good-old sage on sage fire making technique. Success!!! Jesus wept. And all is right in Namibia.

They enjoy a cozy night.

Day 8
Does anyone else think that Luke looks like Ryan Gosling in The Notebook?

Night 13
Lindsie’s tummy lets out the most ferocious growl, “Grrr, put food in here!”

Day 15
Lindsie and Luke are weak and hungry
After eating only raisins and raw cactus, they need substantial food.

Day 17
Luke and Lindsie find a giant nest and think, “Hey a nest, let’s knock it off of a cliff and eat whatever’s inside.” So Lindsie knocks it off of the cliff onto Luke.
And it’s full of birds! Hammerhead storks. Thankfully, not hammerhead sharks, that would have been weird.

Lindsie breaks a stock’s neck with one hand. Like a badass!

Lindsie feel’s a little bad, knowing a momma bird is going to come back to find her nest broken and baby-free, “that just breaks my heart. “

Breaks your heart, but fills your tummy. As triumphant music — that is straight out of Extreme Makeover, Home Edition— plays, they eat 5 juvenile storks. Mmmm, storks…

Day 20
Luke and Lindsie start preparing for their 6-7 mile hike to the extraction point and Lindsie makes amazing sandals with the remaining kudu hide.

Just before they leave to begin their hike, a storm rolls in. They leave their sandals drying near the river as they flee to the cave. If you’ve been naked for 3 weeks and suddenly you have awesome shoes, why in the heck would you take them off? Did they decide their their hovel was a “Shoes off” kinda place?

Day 21
Naked-and-Afraid-Namibia-2The next day, after Luke pees in the stream, they search for the shoes. Holy cr@p, they actually find them!! The soggy shoes are barely functional, but they’re better than nothing. At least for a while. It’s a long hike to the extraction point, and Luke walks through one of his sandals pretty quickly.

After a lot of thorns and swearing, Luke and Lindsie find the extraction point and are airlifted out of Africa, and into pants. They totally love each other and are BFF.

Over the course of 21 days,
Luke lost 25 pounds and Lindsie lost 15 pounds
Luke’s PSR rose to 8.3
Lindsie PSR increased to 7.1

I really like Lindsie and Luke, but I can’t wait to see other episodes where the people hate each other. Some of this season’s other couples look like they loathe each other. He he!

 

I’m always happy when a new season of Naked and Afraid returns, I hope you enjoyed this Naked and Afraid Recap: Season 3, Episode 1

Like Naked And Afraid? Check out these recaps:
Season 3, Episode 1: Namibia,
Season 2, Episode 1: Peru, Episode 2:Madagascar, Episode 3: Fiji, Episode 4:Belize, Episode 5:Malaysia, Episode 6: Bolivia
Polls, What survival Item Would you bring?, Who is your Favorite N&A Couple?