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Juliane Koepcke and her mother were traveling above the Peruvian Amazon when their plane was struck by lightning. She survived a two-mile fall and found herself alone in the bush at the age of 17. She remembers what happened almost 40 years later.
It was Christmas Eve 1971, and everyone was eager to return home; we were irritated since the plane was seven hours late.
We were suddenly surrounded by a thick, dark cloud. My mother was nervous, but I was fine because I enjoyed flying.
Something was clearly wrong ten minutes later.
The plane was leaping up and down, boxes and bags were tumbling from the locker, and gifts, flowers, and Christmas cakes were flying around the cabin.
I was terrified when we noticed lightning near the plane. My mother and I held hands, but we couldn’t communicate. Other people began to wail, mourn, and yell.
After about 10 minutes, I noticed an extremely bright light on the exterior engine on the left. “That is the end. It’s all over,” my mum replied quietly. Those were the final words she ever said to me.
The plane descended and took a nosedive. People were shouting, and the thunderous roaring of the engines filled my mind entirely.
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Suddenly, the noise ended, and I found myself outside the plane. I was hanging head-over-heels in free fall, fastened to my seat bench. The only sound I could hear was the wind whispering.
I felt absolutely isolated.
The jungle canopy was swirling towards me. Then I lost consciousness and had no recollection of the impact. I later learnt that the plane had broken up around two miles above the earth.
I awoke the next morning and glanced up into the canopy. “I survived an air crash,” was my initial thinking.
I yelled for my mother, but all I heard were the jungle sounds. I was totally alone.
I had broken my collarbone and had several severe scrapes on my legs, but my injuries were minor. I later discovered that I had ruptured a ligament in my knee, but I could still walk.
Before the incident, I had spent a year and a half with my parents at their research station, which was barely 30 miles away. I learned much about living in the rainforest and that it wasn’t all that scary. It’s not the green nightmare that everyone imagines.
I could hear helicopters looking for the wreck overhead, but it was a dark forest, and I couldn’t see them.
I was dressed in a short, sleeveless mini-dress and white sandals. I had lost one shoe but kept the other because I was quite short-sighted and had lost my glasses, so I used that shoe to test the ground ahead of me as I walked.
Snakes are camouflaged as dried leaves there. I was lucky not to meet them or perhaps not to see them.
I spotted a tiny creek and went in since I knew it was safer.
I discovered a package of candy at the crash site. I had nothing more to eat when I finished them, and I was terrified about going hungry.
It was very hot and very damp, and it rained several times a day. But it was cold at night, and being alone in that mini-dress was unpleasant.
I recognized the sound of a landing king vulture from my visit to my parents’ reserve on the fourth day.
I was terrified because I knew vultures only land when there is a lot of carrion, and I knew it was bodies from the crash.
When I rounded a bend in the creek, I discovered a bench with three passengers driven headfirst into the earth.
Panic had paralyzed me. It was the first time I had seen a dead body.
When I touched the corpse with a stick, I noticed that the woman’s toenails were painted – my mother never polished her nails.
I was initially relieved but also embarrassed by the idea.
I couldn’t stand straight on the tenth day and drift along the brink of a larger river I had discovered. I felt so alone as if I were in a parallel universe far distant from any human being.
When I saw a tremendously big boat, I believed I was dreaming. It was like an adrenaline rush when I tried to touch it and realized it was real.
But then I noticed a short path into the bush, where I discovered a cottage with a palm leaf roof, an outboard motor, and a litre of fuel.
My upper right arm was swollen from a wound. It was infested with maggots about a millimeter long. I remembered our dog had the same infection, and my father had put kerosene in it, so I drained the gasoline out and rubbed it on the wound.
The pain was unbearable as the maggots worked their way further into the wound. I was really pleased with myself after pulling out about 30 maggots. I decided to spend the night there.
The next day, I heard the voices of several men outside. It was like hearing heavenly voices.
When they spotted me, they became terrified and stopped talking. They mistook me for a water goddess, a character from local myth, which is a cross between a water dolphin and a blonde, white-skinned woman.
I did, however, introduce myself in Spanish and explain what had occurred. They bandaged my wounds, fed me, and returned me to civilisation the next day.
I saw my father the day after I was rescued. He couldn’t say much, so we just hugged each other.
He desperately searched for news about my mum for the next few days. They discovered her body on January 12th.
Later, I discovered that she had also survived the crash but had been severely hurt and was unable to move. She passed away a few days later. I shiver, thinking about her final days.
