Antonio was caught in the lush jungle of the Amazon after the plane he was traveling in failed and crashed. He was unharmed, but he got lost and survived for 36 days due to an improvised model and the eating habits of the monkeys.
It was a Monday in January when pilot Antonio Sena suffered a plane crash in the intestines of the Brazilian Amazon. There, in the vastness of the jungle, he was trapped for 36 days, in which he survived with a machete and the help of monkeys, which he observed in search of food.
Sena, 36, had been hired to operate an air taxi at an illegal gold mine in the heart of the Amazon, between the states of Pará and Amapá. In the middle of the flight, the engine of his small plane stopped. He managed to control the direction of the device for a few minutes and ended up crashing into a remote stream.
Can read: Salvadoran migrant found dehydrated in Chiapas
He got out of the plane unharmed and rushed to save the food he was carrying: three bottles of water, twelve loaves of bread, four boxes of soda, a rope and a sack of cloth. Shortly afterwards, the aircraft exploded.
“I spent the first night and tried to assimilate everything that was going to happen. Many years ago, I underwent a survival training in the jungle, while working for another air taxi company “, said the Brazilian pilot in a telematic interview with Efe.
According to the manual, he stayed at the scene of the accident for the first seven days to wait for the rescue teams. Several planes flew over the area, but with each passing day the noise was less intense and their hopes of making a living.
On the fifth day of waiting, he decided to shoot a farewell video for his family.
“That night I decided to talk to God. I said, “If it is your will to find my family, give me strength, because I tried alone and I failed. It seems to have worked, ”he recalls.
The Amazon is the largest jungle in the world, with almost 7,000 square kilometers. Illustrative and non-commercial image / Pixabay.
The next morning, he began working out a plan to get out of the clutches of the Amazon rainforest, which he described as “a large pulsating living organism.” A forest with many forests inside.
“On the eighth day I took everything and started going east. “I will not die here,” I told myself. “I will not die,” he recalls.
Then he entered the lush jungle with the help of an improvised machete, which he made with a piece of wood, a razor and a knife.
Inside the forest, the routine was the same for long days: I woke up in the light of dawn and walked for hours in the direction of the sun until the afternoon, when I stopped to look for a place to camp, always away from the rivers.
This is because water, he says, attracts the great predators of the Amazon: the jaguar, the alligator and the poisonous anaconda.
You may also be interested in: Missing planes and ships: NASA deciphers what is happening in the mysterious Bermuda Triangle
“Everyone says it’s a region full of jaguars. I never found one. I think the mixture of God and knowing how to get rid of them helped me “, he says.
Despite her temper, fear appeared at night, when the sound of nature broke the silence.
“In the first days, especially at night, I was very scared. That’s when the jungle manifests. There are many unknown noises and, since you don’t recognize them, they seem to arouse your most intimate fears “, he confesses. “Over time, I began to recognize some noises. It’s impressive how the jungle cheats on you. He deceived me a lot. “
Searching for food
In the 36 days he spent lost in the jungle, hunger, he recalls, was “very common.” When the few foods he carried with him were exhausted, he headed for nature. But how do we know if its fruit has been poisonous or not?
“I couldn’t find the fruits you can find on the market: banana, mango, pineapple. None of this in the middle of the jungle. I started noticing small white fruits and I didn’t know what it was. I saw that they fell from the trees because the macaques were moving them. I saw they ate. If the monkeys eat, it’s good “, he says.
He later discovered that it was short, a fruit widely used by the cosmetics industry. He found cocoa four times and three nambu eggs, a bird characteristic of the Amazon.
Lack of food made him lose a lot of weight. In 36 days he lost 25 kilograms.
Observing the eating habits of the monkeys helped him survive in the jungle, says Antonio Sena. Illustrative and non-commercial image / Pixabay.
The sound of the saw
Sena had been wandering in the jungle for more than 30 days when she heard the sound of a chainsaw from afar. His power had reached its limit. He had cramps and loss of vision, but decided to make the last effort.
He entered a swamp and crossed a river. Softened, he continued to walk through the woods watching the distant noise. Then he found a white tarpaulin and, a few miles later, a man.
“She looked at me very scared. He sat there with chestnuts in his hand “, he remembers.
A few minutes later, another man arrived and together they went to the base of the chestnut pickers. Once there, rescue teams and his family were announced by radio. It was the end of his odyssey.
Read also: At least 19 people, including 9 children, have died as a result of eating turtle meat in Madagascar
“My brothers never gave up, they always thought I was alive. I felt his strength. They didn’t give up “, she says through tears.
Sena, who recently flew over the crash site, will now tell her story in a book entitled “36 Days: The Pilot Saga That Fell to the Amazon and Reunited with God,” by publisher Buzz.
“I was turned into that jungle. And my brothers were transformed. Thank God the story transforms many people as well. It’s the only thing we want. That’s all, “he says.