David Beckham had a sink or swim moment on his recent trek through the Amazon.
The former soccer star was joined by friends David Gardner, Derek White and Anthony Mandler on the adventure, but not everything was plain sailing for the group.
Talking to Michael Palin at a press conference for David Beckham Into The Unknown, the 39-year-old star recalled a particularly scary moment.
“We’re going through treacherous waters and I notice there are holes in the boat,” he remembered. “I had to use a bucket to bail the water out. There was no way I was going to sink.”
He also recalled an encounter with a frog, who took a shining to the athlete and decided to follow Beckham back into his tent.
“It was bright orange and I was told it was pretty dangerous,” he exclaimed. “I was a bit nervous about that.”
Palin, the Monty Python star and travel writer quipped, “you are a wimp really. David Attenborough would have interviewed it [the frog].”
Beckham was inspired to take the trip after finishing a casual game of soccer and walking across a London park making his way home.
The thrill-seeking group spent 12 days trekking through the Brazilian rainforest, before meeting with the Yanomami tribe who were oblivious to Beckham’s superstar status.
“Victoria [Beckham, his wife] was not convinced that they wouldn’t know who I was, but I was kind of 95 per cent sure that I wouldn’t be recognised by the tribe – and I was right,” he smiled.
“The fact is, for the last 22 years my every day has been on a schedule and the fact that I woke up in Rio and we said, ‘Let’s go to the favelas.'”
Beckham enjoyed the freedom of his short lived anonymity, and soaked up the experience of living away from home.
Beckham said: “It is the first time I have ever had to explain what soccer is to anybody apart from Victoria.”
“We can have lunch when we want and have dinner when we want and kind of talk about what we wanted to and to meet people that I’ve never met before – that was refreshing.
“Obviously as we went along the trip I was being less recognised and by the end of the trip, when we were with the tribe, they didn’t know who I was, they didn’t know what football was, and it was incredible.”
Before leaving to the rainforest, Beckham is seen being given advice by his former Spice Girls wife. She asks him: “What are you going to do with your hair, with all that humidity” and he,
