It’s hard only if you don’t understand that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Because that’s really all it would take to walk in one direction. Walk in the direction of the sun from dawn until late morning. Rest in the shade for a few hours when the sun is nearly overhead. Walk away from the sun in the afternoon.
With regard to the issue of weather systems and overcast, according to one of the news accounts linked about, Wilson disappeared on July 31 and was found on August 19, 1993. That year was relatively low for tropical storms.The only storms during the period that he was lost, Bret and Cindy, didn’t come anywhere near the Yucatan or Cozumel. He should have had relatively clear skies during most of the time he was lost.
I misinterpreted your post then. (You also quoted it before I edited it.) It’s his apparent lack of even the amount of knowledge of the average Cub Scout that’s so odd about this story.
As a young man in the early 70s, I worked for nearly 2 years on a crew clearing roads (I marked trees of value that were harvested for their timber instead of being cut up and burned) in the jungles of Tabasco and Chiapas for oil exploration. It wasn’t uncommon for members of the surveying crew that were usually a couple of kilometers ahead of us to wander off into the jungle and become disoriented. Some found their own way out and others had to be rescued by search parties. Panic was a big factor in their inability to navigate.
We’re talking about an island 30 miles long and 10 miles wide. Being ‘lost’ on a small rock floating in the ocean is very hard to do because no matter which way you walk, as long as it isn’t in circles, you are going to find the shore in mere hours or at most a couple of days. There are indeed islands with such lush, thick jungle that walking in circles for days without good navigation skills could be possible but Cozumel isn’t one of them.
I haven’t seen this show but all accounts I’ve read online from people who have say it was a ridiculous, over-dramatized and in some cases completely faked story. For example they never show the shoreline in any shots of Cozumel, only views of the jungle as if it was never-ending. They even apparently show huge cliffs and waterfalls towering over thick, dense jungle below. Only problem is that wasn’t shot in Cozumel. In the credits they even say the shots were from Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean.
Other accounts I’ve read indicate he had some sort of mental breakdown, panicked and basically just sat down and cried for about 18 of those days. Then finally, according to his story, he escaped when he saw a vision of the Virgin Mary pointing the way out of the jungle. The Senor Frog’s nightclub spotlights and packs of tourists driving around all day in golf carts have no resemblance to mother Mary so apparently he overlooked those.
That sounds quite possible to me. The only other scenario I can envision is that he didn’t realize how small the island is, or that once he reached a coast he could eventually find civilization. Under that mindset, he might have thought his only hope was to find the original road they came in on. That could lead to directionless blundering as he decided “no, it must be the other way” over and over.
Like most of these “survival” reality shows. Whenever I watch any about Panama I go hoarse yelling at the idiots on the TV for their inability to get along better than they are portrayed doing (even though they supposedly have some survival skills). They are usually starving to death on islands I know for a fact (since I’ve been there) to have big tasty oysters on the rocks or mangrove roots and coconut trees all over the place.
There was one on Coiba Island, a former penal colony, where the guy supposedly had to jump off the fishing boat that brought him and swim ashore because the fisherman was afraid the island was haunted by the ghosts of prisoners. Actually the island is a popular fishing and diving area with lots of boats all around.
“I Shouldn’t Be Alive” isn’t a reality show like Man Vs. Wild. It’s a dramatized re-telling of people getting lost in a survival situation. Usually about people who has no business being in those situations to begin with.
Jeremy Wade, on his show River Monsters, featured the deadly Alligator Gar in the lakes of North Texas. I believe he even attempted to catch the man-eating Gar in one of my main sailing lakes. The fact that I’m still alive surprises me to this day.
(on a side note, I was with two visiting young nieces who love the show and were binge-watching a marathon. When the episode dealing the Candiru, the fish that is said to swim up a urine stream into a man’s penis, came on, I left the room as fast as possible)
assume you didn’t have a compass, and because of the tree canopy you can’t see the sun or the stars to use that for navigation.
To avoid walking in circles can’t you just stand next to a tree, then pick a tree maybe 20m in front of you, walk towards that, and then create a straight line in your vision between your old land mark, new landmark, and then find another landmark 20m down the path and walk towards that? Just keep doing that and making sure all 3 landmarks are visually aligned (old one, current one, next one)
Seems like that would let you walk in a fairly straight line even if you didn’t have the sun or stars to guide you.
That would be a good strategy in somewhat open forest where you can see and travel in a straight line for 20 meters. However, it might be more difficult in dense scrub with small trees, where you can’t see very far and undergrowth makes it hard to go in a straight line. (Even so, in a place like Cozumel even following shorter straight segments should get you to the coast eventually.)