"I don't give
up."
Juliane
Koepcke's white high heels matched the white fabric of her thin sleeveless summer
mini-dress. She had just graduated from high school. That's why this
seventeen-year-old was wearing one of her best outfits. She and her mother were
flying on Christmas Eve 1971 to meet her father for the holidays.
They were
on Flight 508 from Peru's capital Lima to remote Pucallpa on the Amazon.
Juliane was next to her mother in the window seat of a four-engine Lockheed
Electra turboprop passenger plane. There were at 21,000-feet over the
mountainous rainforest when—thirty-six minutes after the stroke of noon—in the
midst of a furious storm, Juliane saw lightning—"a glistening
light"—hit one of the engines on the plane's right wing.
Metal Confetti
"This
is the end of everything," she thought. The wing fell off. The plane nosedived.
A huge roar filled the cabin as the fuselage shredded, bursting into metal
confetti.
Still
strapped to her seat, her mother no longer by her side, Juliane remembers
falling, falling, falling, the sky quiet around her. Then she looked down and
saw the rainforest canopy—its trees as thickly packed "like green
cauliflower, like broccoli"—rushing to meet her.
When she
woke up, she was upside down and still buckled in. Other than some gashes, a
broken collarbone, and an eye swollen shut, she was unharmed. She cried out for
her mother. No answer. She searched for her for a day. She saw no survivors or
wreckage. She did find a bag of candy. She ate a piece and only one piece,
saving the rest.
As horrific
as Juliane's situation was, she had one big advantage. She had grown up in the
jungle with her biologist father, and her mother, an ornithologist. She knew
what not to be afraid of. Animal sounds
that might have terrified another teenager did not scare her. She knew how
predators behaved and which insects and plants were the most dangerous.
She heard
planes overhead, but she knew they would never see her through the 'broccoli'
overhead. She understood she would have to do something to survive.
She Knelt and Drank
Incredibly
thirsty, she licked drops of water off leaves. Then she saw a trickle of water.
It was too pitiful to even be a stream. She knelt and drank. Her father had
told her that if she were ever lost in the jungle to head downhill and follow
water. It might grow into a stream, and the stream might grow into a river, and
if she kept to the river, she might find a settlement or someone who would
rescue her.
Going
forward would be hard. Though her injuries were relatively minor, she had lost
her glasses and one of her sandals. For the next 11 days, she felt the blurry way
ahead. The trickle did indeed turn into a stream, and the stream did indeed
become a river, and she started swimming, knowing that piranhas congregate only
in still water. She had few worries about the caiman alligators who might be
prowling the current. Experience had taught her that they leave people alone.
The worst
of her ordeal was the hunger (the bag of candy did not last long), the ceaseless
rain, the cold chill of night, the millions of mosquitoes torturing her, and
never knowing whether her odyssey would end in lonely death or rescue. "I
don't give up," she told herself again and again.
A Bizarre Insect
Wriggling
leeches fixed themselves to her. A bizarre insect laid eggs in her skin. Days
later its maggots were born and writhed in her flesh as they ate their way out.
No matter how hard she tried with a stick, she could not force out the
maddening worms.
At last,
she saw a primitive shelter on the riverbank, a motorboat moored there.
Crawling ashore, she found a can of diesel fuel. She remembered seeing her father
use gas to rid a dog of skin parasites. She dashed the vile smelling liquid on
her body. She counted 35 worms emerge from one arm alone.
Of the 92
passengers and crew on the plane, Juliane was the only one to leave the jungle
alive. A few others, including her mother, had survived. None had been as bold
as Juliane. (Her mother had been too injured too move.) Juliane took action,
and her courage saved her life.
MORAL: Fortune favors the prepared mind.
Stay calm and look for a motorboat.
Stay calm and look for a motorboat.
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