Real life Castaway heads to uninhabited Pacific island for ‘bucket list’ retreat

Paul Bowness, of Wallasey, Merseyside, headed to Panama’s Pearl Islands for a ‘bucket list’ survivalist retreat to raise money for the charity SOS Children’s Villages

A man who survived alone for three days on an isolated, uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean has said that the experience made him realise “just how lucky we are”.

Paul Bowness, 45, swapped his home comforts in Wallasey, Merseyside, for a tiny island 60 miles off the coast of Panama, Central America, on a “bucket list” survivalist retreat. It left him thirsty, hungry and exhausted as temperatures soared to more than 30C.

Left alone on the island with nothing but some rudimentary tools and a walkie talkie for emergencies, Paul – who works as a consultant in his regular life – had to catch fish and forage for food, drink water from fallen coconuts, and build a shelter out of anything he could find on the beach that was his home.

While the experience was “much more difficult than (he) thought”, with the isolation affecting him more than he expected, Paul raised £2368 for the charity SOS Children’s Villages – which works around the world to support children and young people who don’t have, or are at risk of losing parental care.

He said the experience made him “really realise how lucky we’ve got it” at home in the UK. Paul said: “You take things for granted – if you’re hungry, for us, we just go to the fridge and get some food. On that island, when I was hungry, I got up early, started fishing at 9am, caught the fish, had to gut the fish, scale the fish, prepare the fish, make a fire… It’s like five hours, just for a fish.

“Life is not easy for a lot of people, and we take a lot for granted – I certainly realised that on the island.” In February 2026, Paul set off for Panama’s Pearl Islands, 60 miles off the coast of the Central American country, to a tiny three kilometre by one kilometre island that was to be his home.

He had planned the trip through Desert Island Survival, a company he had come across on social media when an advert “popped up at a time that was pretty right for me”. He added: “I was really stressed with work, life got a bit tough, and I remember thinking: I just need a new adventure.”

Paul met a group of fellow adventurers for five days of training on the island where “there’s no phone signal, there’s no electricity, nothing on there at all”, and was taught essential skills like building shelter, catching fish, collecting coconuts, “and then other cool little things I never really thought about, like weaving a mattress out of palm leaves, weaving a sombrero to keep the sun off you, making rope”.

He also learned about the dangers of the island wilderness: “There are sharks in the sea, you have to shuffle to get into the sea so you don’t get stung by a sting ray. There’s deadly snakes, there’s poisonous spiders, there’s an apple tree that grows all over the island that’s poisonous, deadly.”

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