Nick Knowles in South America

冒险 · 旅行

S1 E1 Episode 1

本集简介

Nick opens the series clinging by his fingernails 100 feet up on a rock. This is the ‘baby slopes' of the magnificent Andes Mountains, providing an exhilarating start to his South American adventure.

Crossing the Strait of Magellan (named after the Portuguese explorer, Ferdinand) to tiny, barren Magdalena Island, Nick comes face to face with 40,000 breeding pairs of Magellan penguins.

Southern Patagonia has long been a magnet for explorers. As well as Magellan, whose voyage was the first to circumnavigate the world. Three hundred years later Charles Darwin came here on the HMS Beagle, changing the way we viewed the world. Nick visits full-sized replicas of both (surprisingly small) ships.

The Kaweskas are an indigenous people known for their profound connection to the ocean. Nick learns their style of weaving as they explain how their forebears lived extraordinary seafaring lifestyles.

Chile is one of the windiest places in the world, and Nick is blown away by a factory producing near carbon-neutral hydrogen-based fuel, using wind energy. It's the first of its kind in the world, and Nick is the first person to have his car filled with the e-fuel it produces.

A humbling encounter with a courageous French cyclist encourages Nick to take stock. Dimitri Poffé cycled 11,000 miles from Mexico to the tip of South America, through the grueling Andes mountains to raise awareness for incurable Huntington's disease, which he lives with, but which is also rife in this part of South America.

In the heart of this stunning landscape, Nick finds the world's first geodesic dome eco-hotel. Powered by renewable energy, plastic is banned on site and even the sewage is treated sustainably, and Nick gets stuck in, digging in dung for worms.

Finally, on the icy and ominous Grey Lake, Nick kayaks out to get a closer look at the awe-inspiring Grey Glacier but with the risk of it carving at any moment, Nick soon learns it's wise to keep a safe distance.
It's a suitably impressive end to the first part of Nick's South American adventure.

下一集

2024/06/06 S1 E2

Episode 2

The second part of Nick Knowle's exhilarating South American adventure is set in the beautiful Chilean lake district. Chile is a land of volcanoes and in the shadow of the mighty mount Osorno, Nick takes to the icy blue waters to try out the relatively new sport of hydrospeeding, essentially bodyboarding on a fast-flowing river. Nick launches with infectious enthusiasm.

At a seaweed processing plant Nick discovers how in Chile, the longest country in the world, people are finding ingenious ways to harness the sea's bounty in the fight against climate change. Seaweed makes biodegradable plastic, nutrient-rich food supplements and even cattle fodder which reduces methane emissions. All this, and fast-growing, low impact, and readily available. What's not to love?

In coastal Puerto Montt, Nick heads to a rustic bar to discover Cueca, a traditional type of music and dance that is being reclaimed by the Chilean people after it was tainted by the notorious dictator, General Pinochet in the 1980s.

On the mystical island of Chiloe Nick delights in ginormous mussels, his contribution to a special meal. Curanto is the oldest form of cooking in Chile in which seafood is sizzled over hot stones in the ground and layered with aromatic leaves, leaving the meat and potatoes perfectly steamed in the salty haze.

At one of the island's UNESCO-protected wooden churches, Nick meets a white witch who shares some of the local superstitions with him. He moves to take part in La Minga, a local tradition in which the community pulls together to complete tasks too big for one alone. Nick is given the terrifying job of man handling two huge bulls to get them to shift a shed across the farm.

Finally, he visits the local library that is on a boat. He meets the woman responsible for bringing a love of reading to children all over the islands with her floating library. He leaves Chiloe with a rejuvenated sense of community and a deep respect for the people who call Chile their home.

哇，窗口太小啦

Nick Knowles in South America