{"id":1114,"date":"2009-07-15T12:52:40","date_gmt":"2009-07-15T19:52:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/?p=1114"},"modified":"2010-05-23T19:52:57","modified_gmt":"2010-05-24T02:52:57","slug":"man-survives-300-days-knife-pig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/man-survives-300-days-knife-pig\/","title":{"rendered":"Man survives 300 days with knife, pig"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Man<\/a>WITH just two knives for cutting and a baby pig for company, Xavier Rosset sat solo on an uninhabited Pacific island for 300 lonely days.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But unlike Robinson Crusoe, the young Swiss adventurer made a choice to isolate himself totally, surviving on food and shelter got by his own hand to challenge the modern way of life.<\/p>\n

“It was hard, yes, very hard,” Mr Rosset said, freshly arrived back in Europe after ending his 10-month stint in Tonga.<\/p>\n

His island of choice was Tofua, a 64-square-kilometre volcanic isle home to nothing except “some pigs, lots of coconuts, a lake and tropical forest”.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

His luggage consisted of just a Swiss army knife, machete and a video camera to record his adventure for a documentary to be aired later this year.<\/p>\n

The mission was to try to relearn the natural survival skills which urban men have long forgotten, but Mr Rosset said it was far from easy.<\/p>\n

Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.<\/p>\n

End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.<\/p>\n

“At the beginning I had to try hard to survive,” the former professional snowboarder said.<\/p>\n

“I had to find the food and water, build shelter, learn how to fish, everything.”<\/p>\n

Last September, just 10 days in, he had a realisation that he was all alone and would be for many months to come.<\/p>\n

“That was very hard, without my family, my girlfriend, my friends. There was a lot of loneliness.”<\/p>\n

But he was kept busy just trying to survive.<\/p>\n

Over the next two months he lost nearly all the 18kg of body fat he had stockpiled before starting his adventure.<\/p>\n

He wasn’t able to hold his weight steady until he discovered how to trap and kill wild pigs, in the process making his only “friend”, a tiny piglet.<\/p>\n

“I couldn’t eat it because there wasn’t enough meat so I took it with me and she stayed with me for three months,” he said.<\/p>\n

“She was exactly like a dog. She was a very good friend for me but I didn’t talk to her like (Tom Hanks) talked to the volleyball in the movie Castaway.”<\/p>\n

It wasn’t until eight months into the stay that Mr Rosset says he felt at peace on the island.<\/p>\n

In a blog recording from this time, the explorer said: “I’m spending the most part of the day doing nothing, looking at the big ocean or the butterfly who has come to say hello to me.”<\/p>\n

“I even have enough food. I can say now and now only that I am feeling (at) home.”<\/p>\n

Being truly home in Switzerland has been the biggest high however, and there’s no plan to go bush again anytime soon.<\/p>\n

[via Daily Telegraph<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WITH just two knives for cutting and a baby pig for company, Xavier Rosset sat solo on an uninhabited Pacific island for 300 lonely days. But unlike Robinson Crusoe, the young Swiss adventurer made a choice to isolate himself totally, surviving on food and shelter got by his own hand to challenge the modern way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[195],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}