Iguana, your example of survival on an island while utilizing only native food is an exceptional paleo diet example. Did you feel good during your stay?
It was during an 8 months trip around the world with my former wife and my then 10 years old son. Wherever we went (Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaisia, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, Fiji, USA, Mexico) I could still eat 100% raw. I was just somewhat hungry sometimes, but if you’re not too far from the sea, you can usually find something good and suitable to eat raw before dying of starvation!
We stayed one month in a remote island, at the time administratively attached to the Fiji, and from there 6 Polynesians and myself adventured to this far away islet inhabited by seabirds only.
The was no harbor nor anchorage for the outboard motorboat, so we had to swim from the standby boat against the strong South Pacific current to reach the shore. A friend and me finally managed to land by swimming at full power, but we had to leave everything aboard: we could not event take the container of a gallon of fresh water. 3 guys stayed in the boat to go fishing and said they will return and take us back at the end of the afternoon. It was about noon. Two others went spear fishing around with palms, masks, snorkels and underwater guns.
There was plenty of seabirds’ nests full of eggs just on the grass ! On the other part of the islet separated by a tiny lagoon there stood small trees, and on those easily climbed trees there were birds nests with eggs too. The lagoon was crowded with shellfish and various fish, as the surrounding waters. At that time, 21 years ago, I didn’t dare nor even think of drinking some seawater, but there was 2 small coconut trees, so that we could get young nuts, open them with stones and drink their water. Bags made by my friend out of palms and attached to lost and washed ashore yellow plastic floaters from fishing nets helped us to float our pickings (more eggs, a lot of fish, shellfish) back the boat.
Such places very difficult to access are still stuffed with plenty of natural provisions. Two decades ago (how is it now?) some spots in Baja California were still incredibly chock-full of fish and shellfish too. Civilized men devastate all this wherever then can go.
I had very little meat during this 8 months trip because it’s so difficult to find trustable meat when you don’t know anybody in the country. Therefore I ate a lot of fish and when we came back home I could get half of a chamois. I ate the whole haunch in two meals!
Well, I was in a very good shape at the end of this trip. It’s good to be hungry from time to time, per example on another island with no shop at all, and moreover just after a hurricane so there was also no fish and almost nothing to eat anywhere. Therefore I tried manioc, said to be toxic raw. It wasn’t harmful to me. Some days latter, we were back at Suva, the capital. I bought a tuna fish of 3 or 4 kg and ate it all at once. When my wife came back to the guest house, she said “ where is the tuna?”. I said : “there’s no more, I ate it all”. She couldn’t believe me and I had to show her the bones in the garbage can. “Huh…I wanted to cook some for my diner…”
4 years latter I went again on another trip around the World with somebody else. It lasted about 8 months too and we had no problem in finding our raw food. Never been ill anywhere.
