Eating insects, drinking urine: Bolivian recounts month lost in Amazon
by AFP Staff Writers
La Paz (AFP) Feb 28, 2023

A Bolivian who claimed to have been missing in the Amazon alone for a month, on Tuesday recounted eating insects and worms, collecting water in his boots and drinking his own urine to stay alive.

If confirmed, this could make Jhonatan Acosta, 30, one of the longest-ever lone Amazon survivors.

"It helped a lot to know about survival techniques: I had to consume insects, drink my urine, eat worms. I was attacked by animals," he told Unitel TV.

Acosta was reported missing by his family at the end of January. He had been on a hunting trip with four friends in the Amazon rainforest but got separated from his party on January 25.

Exactly a month later, last Saturday, he was found by search and rescue teams.

Acosta told Unitel it rained half the time he was lost. He used his rubber boots to collect whatever rainwater he could.

But when the skies dried up, he had to drink his own waste.

"I asked God for rain," Acosta recounted. "If it hadn't rained, I would not have survived."

Disoriented, he had walked about 40 kilometers (25 miles) in search of civilisation, Acosta said, but soon discovered he was going around in circles.

Exposed to the elements at night, he said he was bitten by all sorts of different creatures.

In another well-known case in Bolivia, Israeli adventurer Yossi Ghinsberg survived three weeks in the Amazon in 1981, a feat which inspired a movie called "Jungle" starring Daniel Radcliffe.

In Brazil, pilot Antonio Sena survived 38 days in the Amazon after crashlanding in 2021. The following year, two brothers aged seven and nine were rescued after spending 25 days lost in the Brazilian part of the rainforest.

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