Simon Reeve eats ‘quite tasty’ testicles on new BBC series
The traveller spent time with Gaucho cowboys, who ‘eat a diet of a pure carnivore’, for documentary series Wilderness With Simon Reeve.
Traveller and TV presenter Simon Reeve has revealed he ate “tasty” testicles that were similar to a “soft-boiled egg” on a new show for BBC Two.
The 51-year-old fronts documentary series Wilderness With Simon Reeve, which sees him explore remote landscapes across the globe, and said they looked to film in areas “where nature was still largely in charge”.
Reflecting on his time exploring the Andes, he said: “I stayed with Gaucho cowboys on the edge of the South Patagonian icefield in the Andes Mountains, and they eat a diet of a pure carnivore.
“Testicles are on the menu a lot and they are quite tasty, to be honest.
“They call them prairie oysters in North America, and they’re a bit like eating a soft-boiled egg.”
Discussing some of the toughest parts of making the series, he added: “There was a lot that could have gone wrong on the journeys, and everybody accepted there were risks involved.
“We faced challenges along the way and I was quite lucky, really, to emerge from the journeys relatively unscathed.
“We found a jigger flea burrowing its way into the foot of Jonathan our cameraman, laying its eggs inside him.
“That had to be dug out with a scalpel by torchlight in the middle of the Congo jungle.
“Eric, one of the directors, went down with a fever in the middle of the sea in the Coral Triangle off the coast of Indonesia, and we spent a night struggling with maps trying and failing to find anywhere within reach where there was a clinic or potentially somewhere to land a rescue helicopter.
“Luckily, in the end it wasn’t necessary, but it was a reminder of how incredibly remote we were.
“And in Patagonia, our cameraman Piers damaged his ankle while we were going up into the Andes, and had to be taken back down.”
He added: “There were a host of physical risks and challenges, of course, not least when I went off into the depths of the Kalahari alone with two local trackers, facing potentially man-eating lions with just a small can of pepper spray strapped to my belt.”
Reeve said his stand-out moment from the series was getting close to wildebeest in Africa.
“I was crawling along the ground with two trackers and hunters in the heart of the Kalahari, trying to get up close to a herd of wildebeest”, he said.
“The guides were trying to feed their families and small village in the wild.
“As we approached, the hunters popped up and fired off their poison arrows. But because I was with them we weren’t close enough.”
As well as eating testicles in Patagonia, Reeve chased bonobos and met a former elephant poacher when he travelled to the Congo.
The first episode of Wilderness With Simon Reeve will air on January 21 at 9pm on BBC Two and all four of the 60-minute episodes will be available on BBC iPlayer.
