A Bolivian man who claimed to have disappeared alone in the Amazon for a month said he ate insects and worms to survive, collecting water on his boots.
If the stories of 30-year-old Jhonatan Acosta are confirmed, he will be the longest survivor on Amazon alone.
“Knowing about survival techniques was very helpful: I had to eat insects, I had to eat worms. I was attacked by animals,” Acosta told Unitel TV.
Acosta was reported missing by his family at the end of January.
He was on a hunting trip in the Amazon rainforest with four friends, but left the band on January 25.
He was found exactly one month later, last Saturday, by search and rescue teams.
Acosta told Unitel that half the time he disappeared, it rained. He used his rubber boots to collect whatever rainwater he could find.
“I asked God for rain. If it hadn’t rained, I wouldn’t have survived,” Acosta said.
In another known case in Bolivia, Israeli adventurer Yossi Ghinsberg survived for three weeks in the Amazon in 1981; this inspired a movie called Jungle starring Daniel Radcliffe.