Imagine spending twenty-one days in the jungle in the Philippines, nearly alone, without any food or shelter except what you’re able to forage for yourself.

Okay – now imagine doing it all in the nude.

That is, in fact, the premise of the TV show “Naked and Afraid,” now in its fifth season on the Discovery Channel – and Chapel Hill resident Karen Coffee was one of this season’s participants. (Her episode, entitled “Contamination,” aired in April.)

Coffee spent three weeks in the jungle with Louisiana truck driver Matt Alexander, armed with little more than a machete. (She says the machete was so dull, they called it “the butter knife.”) It’s a show about survivalism, and you can’t qualify unless you’re already good at it – applicants undergo rigorous physical and psychological testing before they’re allowed to participate – so Coffee says the show’s title is a bit of a misnomer: true, they were naked, but they weren’t really ‘afraid.’

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Karen Coffee from Naked and Afraid

But she says it was still a major challenge. Among other things, she and Alexander battled blistered feet, ate skunk meat – “it tastes like roast beef” – and fought a serious illness in the final week. (That illness lingered on beyond the competition: Coffee came down with meningitis after returning to the States, and she says she couldn’t listen to the radio for months afterward.)

Karen Coffee discussed her show experience on WCHL with Aaron Keck.

 

Coffee isn’t done globetrotting: this weekend, she’s off to China to participate in an attempt to break the Guinness world record for planking.

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Karen Coffee and Aaron Keck.