“It’s unbelievable how many bugs have stung me”
A young Bolivian, Jonathan Acosta, is lost in the jungle. After more than 30 days, a miracle happened.
He survived by drinking his own urine: Jonathan Acosta.
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On January 25, Jonatan Acosta, a 30-year-old cocoa farmer from northern Bolivia, goes hunting with four friends in the Amazon jungle. In doing so, he drifts away from the others and suddenly realizes he doesn’t see his friends, looking for them and calling for help in a growing panic. But to no avail. By the time others realize they’ve lost Jonathan, it’s already too late.
His family reported him missing and over the next few days, police and volunteer search teams raided the forest. No sign of Acosta. The volunteers did not give up even though his chances of survival were diminishing day by day. After 31 days, as they are about to complete their eleventh journey, they hear a shot and a shout. The missing man fired his hunting rifle into the air to get his attention. The first thing the rescuers ask for is water.
As Bolivian media later reported, he was confused and said: “Please get me out of here. I’ll pay for it.” His face is swollen, he is severely dehydrated, has lost 17 kilograms and sprained his ankle on the fourth day of his ordeal. As he received medical treatment in the northern Bolivian town of Baures, relatives and residents gathered to celebrate.
A pig attacks him
In Bolivia, Acosta is now a television interview star. After losing sight of his friends, he tried to walk straight, hoping to find a sign. Or to come across a street or a village.
But at one point he noticed with indescribable horror that he was going around in circles again and again. “I ate insects and worms and caught rainwater in my rubber boots. If it hadn’t rained so often, I would have died,” says Acosta. However, sometimes he drank his own urine.
He is usually awake at night. “It’s unbelievable how many bugs have bitten me.” Once he was attacked by an animal like a wild boar. Another time he had to flee from a jaguar.
Jonathan Acosta calls his recovery a miracle. He thanks God and says he will go back to work as a cocoa farmer.
As a precaution, some international media write sentences like this: “Bolivian claims to have survived 30 days in the Amazon.” The British newspaper “Guardian” and the American broadcaster “CBS News” note that Acosta is one of the longest living alone in the Amazon – “if his story is confirmed”. Video footage taken immediately after his rescue But the real look.
His body is dehydrated and his face is swollen: Jonathan Acosta after recovery.
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Another famous case is that of Israeli adventurer Yossi Ghinsberg. He survived three weeks in the Amazon in November 1981 and later wrote a book about it, which was made into a movie in 2017 called Jungle – starring Daniel Radcliffe, the main character in the Harry Potter films. In Brazil in 2021, a pilot survived a crash landing in the jungle for 40 days, and a year later, two seven- and eleven-year-old brothers were rescued after more than three weeks.
Jonathan Acosta calls his recovery a miracle. He thanks God and says that one day he will work as a cocoa farmer again. But first he really wants to rest.
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