Four siblings in Colombia who were lost in the jungle after their plane crashed relied on prior knowledge of the environment to survive, according to details shared by their father and rescuers.
The children were traveling with their mother from the Amazonian village of Araracuara to the town of San Jose del Guaviare when the plane went down.
The Cessna single-engine propeller plane was carrying three adults and the four children when the pilot declared an emergency due to engine failure. None of the adults survived.
After wandering alone for more than a month, the Huitoto Indigenous children — ages 13, nine, five, and one — were rescued and airlifted out of the Amazon on Friday, and were recovering two days later in a military hospital in the capital Bogota.
The siblings are expected to remain for at least two weeks in a hospital receiving treatment after their rescue, but some are already speaking and wanting to do more more than lie in bed, relatives said.
First words after 40 day jungle nightmare
When rescuers reached the kids, the first words they uttered were "I'm hungry" and "my mom is dead," members of the rescue group said in a televised interview Sunday.
Members of the group, themselves members of the Indigenous population, recounted the first moments after meeting the children.
"The eldest daughter, Lesly, with the little one in her arms, ran towards me. Lesly said: 'I'm hungry,'" said Nicolas Ordonez Gomes, one of the search and rescue crew. "One of the two boys was lying down. He got up and said to me: 'My mom is dead.'"
Henry Guerrero, an Indigenous man who was part of the search group, told reporters that the children were found with two small bags containing some clothes, a towel, a flashlight, two cellphones, a music box and a soda bottle. He said they used the bottle to collect water in the jungle.
Children's mother died four days after crash
Manuel Miller Ranoque, the father of the children, speaking to the press on Sunday outside the hospital, said that his wife had been severely injured in the crash, but that she did not die until four days later, with her children beside her.
"The one thing that (13-year-old Lesly) has cleared up for me is that, in fact, her mother was alive for four days," Ranoque told reporters. Magdalena Mucutuy, the children's mother, was an Indigenous leader herself.
"Before she died, their mom told them something like, 'You guys get out of here. You guys are going to see the kind of man your dad is, and he's going to show you the same kind of great love that I have shown you,'" Ranoque said.
Local knowledge helped children survive
Authorities and family members have said the siblings ate cassava flour and seeds. Their familiarity with some of the rainforest's fruits were also key to staying alive.
They ate seeds, fruits, roots and plants that they identified as edible from their upbringing in the Amazon region, Luis Acosta of the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia said.
"The survival of the children is a sign of the knowledge and relationship with the natural environment that is taught starting in the mother's womb," he added.
Army chief Helder Giraldo said rescuers had covered over 2,600 kilometers in total to locate the children. "Something that seemed impossible was achieved," Giraldo said on Twitter. In addition to jaguars, snakes and other predators, the area is also home to armed drug smuggling groups.
"It was a successful amalgam of indigenous knowledge and military art," General Pedro Sanchez, who led the search operations, said. In this mission "failing or giving up was not an option," Sanchez said. His men, the most highly trained in the Colombian army, had accomplished "the impossible," he added.
Rescue teams missed children
According to Sanchez, the children were found 5 kilometers away from the crash site in a small forest clearing. He said rescue teams had passed within 20 to 50 meters of where the children were found on a couple of occasions but had missed them.
Two weeks after the crash, on May 16, a search team found the plane in a thick patch of the rainforest and recovered the bodies of the three adults on board, but the small children were nowhere to be found.
Soldiers on helicopters dropped boxes of food into the jungle, hoping that it would help sustain the children.
Planes flying over the area fired flares to help search crews on the ground at night, and rescuers used speakers that blasted a message recorded by the siblings' grandmother telling them to stay in one place. The Colombian government, which is trying to end internal conflicts in the country, has praised the joint work of the military and Indigenous communities to find the children.