Sole Survivor: Part Two - The Jungle

Seventeen-year-old Juliane Koepcke regains consciousness, only to realize she has fallen 10,000 feet from the sky and miraculously survived. Alone in the vast Peruvian jungle, injured and disoriented, she must rely on her instincts and survival skills to navigate the unforgiving wilderness. As she searches for her mother and other survivors, the dense rainforest becomes both a refuge and a formidable adversary. With search planes circling above and no way to signal for help, Juliane makes a fateful decision—follow the water and keep moving forward.

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Transcript

Sole Survivor: A story in 3 parts – this is part two: The Jungle

[Underscore Music]

As Juliane’s eyes blinked awake, she remembered that she had been in a plane crash and now she was lost somewhere in the middle of the Peruvian rain forest. 

[Theme Music Start]

We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.

[Theme Music Play Out]

[Under Score Music]

Juliane was still calm as her mother leaned over and in a nervous voice said, “Hopefully, all will be ok”. Juliane turned to look back out of the window of the plane, and she suddenly sees a blinding flash of white light, just over the plane’s right wing. The light is so bright that Juliane loses all sense of time, she could not tell if the flash had lasted only a second or several minutes, but then she heard her mother’s voice, a voice that was now eerily calm as she leaned to her daughter and said, “Now it’s all over.”

The nose of the plane took a dramatic dive, [passenger’s screams]pitching the entire body of the plane directly at the ground that loomed far below them. [Roaring Plane Sound]The passenger’s’ screams began to be drowned out by the intense roar of the plane as it dove at the ground, [Increase Plane Sound] Juliane knew that the plane was falling fast, and then suddenly [screams stop]the screaming stopped and then [plane noise stops] the roar of the plane seemed to stop. [clean outside sound] It takes only a moment for Juliane to realize that she is no longer inside of the ill-fated plane.  This is also the instant that Juliane realizes she is now falling, she is all alone, and she is 10,000 feet in the air.

[Music Change – Falling through the air]

In the blink of an eye, Juliane realized that she was still buckled into her seat, but there was no plane around her, she was falling, falling through the air and she was still 10,000 feet above the Earth. 

The rushing air fills Juliane’s ears, but there is no other sound than that, just the sound of rushing air and nothing else.  Later in his book about this incident Werner Herzog wrote, “she did not leave the airplane, the airplane left her.”  As Juliane took stock of her current situation, she came to realize a couple of things, one, she was still strapped into her seat, actually she was still attached to her entire row of seats.  And two, her mother was no longer sitting beside her, neither was the man who had boarded the flight and had immediately fallen asleep.  

Juliane lost consciousness several times, the air rushed by, filling her ears with a constant white noise of the rushing air. The seatbelt, doing what seatbelts are intended to do, held her against the plane seats, the pressure is intense, and Juliane can hardly breathe due to the pressure, before she can be afraid of what is about to happen, Juliane loses consciousness again. A moment later, Juliane wakes up again, still in the throws of her nightmare, only now she can see the ground coming to meet her and she realizes that she is upside down. Juliane is still attached to the entire row of seats, three across, even though both of the other seats are now empty. Because of this, Juliane and the bench of seats are now spinning like a maple leaf. 

[Childhood melody – Forest Gump Intro]

If you did not grow up playing with Maple seeds as a child like I did, let me explain. Maple seeds are shaped like a wing, and they twirl because of a phenomenon called autorotation. When the wing-shaped seeds fall from the tree, they rotate like a spinning top in the air, which gives them extra lift and helps them travel farther. The whirling motion is caused by a tornado-like vortex that sits atop the front leading edge of the seed as it spins slowly to the ground. This vortex lowers the air pressure over the upper surface of the seed, effectively sucking the wing upward to oppose gravity. This motion was in effect, slowing Juliane down as she fell through the sky with no control.

Juliane is still high in the air and the dense jungle below her looks like broccoli stocks from this height, but they were getting closer and closer as Juliane spun and spun and then she passed out again. 

Dreams are mysterious things; it is said that dreaming may represent important cognitive functioning. Brain activity that occurs when we are dreaming is similar to the memory processing brain activity that we experience when we are awake.  When you are experiencing more stress or anxiety, you tend to dream more, as well. The types of dreams you have also change. For example, nightmares or stressful dreams about being chased or being in a frightening situation are also common when you are stressed. This is one of the theories of why we dream, our dreams might help us process and manage our emotions.  I believe that sometimes our dreams also help protect us.  As Juliane fell through the sky she dreamed and she was still present in one of these dreams, when she landed back on earth.  

Juliane dreamed that she was running through a dark space, just next to a wall and the sounds of rushing air filled her ears. And then her dream changed, in her second dream she felt that she was sticky and covered in muck, she felt like she desperately needed a bath, but she does not want to move. Laying there all sticky, she prods herself further and Juliane tells herself, “That’s easy, all you have to do is get up. Just get up and go to the bathtub. It’s not that far.” And during this dream, at the precise moment when Juliane decided that yes, she could get up walk to the bathtub, she woke up again.

[Music Change – The Forest]

When Juliane wakes up again, she quickly realizes that she is now on the ground, she is on the muddy jungle floor and the airplane seat is on top of her, like a small pup tent a boy scout would use back in the day. Her seatbelt was no longer fastened, she did not know how that had happened, had she unbuckled it herself, she could not remember. She crawled even further under the pronated bench until it covered her entire body, and she curled up into the fetal position and fell back asleep. Juliane, had fallen from the sky and somehow, survived. She slept for the rest of the day, through the entire night and she only awoke again the next morning. 

[Sound of the forest]

Unbeknownst to her, Juliane slept through the rest of the day and all through the night.  When she opened her eyes the next morning, she immediately remembered; she had been in a plane crash, she had fallen from the sky, she was in the middle of the jungle, she was 17 years old, and she was all alone.  The giant trees filter the sunlight making everything on the ground appear to have a green hue like a panting. The forest around her was not that different from her beloved Panguana and because of this, Juliane was not immediately fearful, she knew the forest, she knew how to survive in the forest, no she was not afraid, she was just alone and filled with an endless feeling of abandonment.

The three-seat bench, which had accompanied Juliane to the ground was empty, there was no sign of her mother, nor the heavy-set man who had fallen asleep immediately after boarding. Juliane attempted to stand up, but as she did, everything around her goes black and she is forced back to the ground. She deduces that she probably has a severe concussion, a pretty good assertion after falling over 10,000 feet out of the air.

Juliane looks at her gold watch, a gift from her grandmother for her confirmation, and luckily it is still working, Juliane can hear the soft ticks of the second hand, but as she attempts to look at her watch, she discovers that she cannot see it clearly. Juliane lifts her hands to her own face, and she begins to explore the contours of her face, she discovers that her left eye was swollen almost completely shut, her right eye is not doing much better as it is also swollen, Juliane can only see through a narrow slit in her right eye, and she has no idea where her glasses have gone. When Juliane forces her one barely open eye to focus on her watch, she learns that it is now 9:00 o’clock in the morning. She begins to feel dizzy once again and she is forced back down the floor of the forest.

After some rest on the muddy forest floor, Juliane attempts to stand once again, this time she makes it to her knees before everything goes black, once again forcing her back to the ground. After a few more failed attempts at simply standing, Juliane is up, standing on her own two feet, a bit wabbly, like a new born giraffe, but there she is. Now that she is up, she decides she needs to do a full self-assessment. She realizes that her right collar bone feels funny, as she feels the bone, she can tell it is broken and the broken ends of the bone are laying on top of one another, but they have not pierced through her skin and she honestly did not feel any pain from the broken bone. She moves on in her self-exam. Next, Juliane discovers a large laceration on her left calf, it is a rough cut, as if a piece of broken metal had slashed through her leg. But strangely, the cut was not even bleeding. 

Everything else on Juliane’s body seemed to be ok, or as ok at it could be considering that she had fallen out of an airplane. But then the worse pain of all came rushing back to Juliane, the pain of isolation. She did not understand where everyone else was, where was her mother, they had been sitting right next to one another. Juliane could barley see so she began to crawl around on the forest floor, reaching out around her, attempting to find other survivors, she called out for her mother over and over and over again, but only the sounds of the jungle answered her back.

[Music Change – Strange Christmas distorted music??]

It was now December 25th, 1971, Christmas morning, a day meant for celebration and gathering with family and loved ones, but Juliane has never felt nor been more alone, Juliane attempts to pull herself together and figure out how she will conquer this unfathomable situation. Juliane was not scared to be in the jungle, she had been going into the jungle with her parents for years and she knew that she had to maintain a level head and through calm and methodical thinking, she could master almost any situation.  The one thing on Juliane’s mind was her mother, she had to find her mother. 

The forest can be frightening, the shadows dance around causing your mind to play tricks on you. There is a damp mustiness, and everything smells like its just on the verge of rotting. The treetops tower overhead making anything on the ground seem as small as an ant. The sounds of the forest can be the most intimidating part, loud disembodied noises are all around you and if you do not know any better, these noises can frighten you, because you may no realize that the loudest thing in the jungle around you is just a really loud frog or bird. But these almost innocuous animals are of no real concern, [Mosquitoes Sounds] what a human truly needs to fear in the jungle are the bugs and insects.  The jungle is alive with over 2.5 million species of insects and sure some are great like grasshoppers, beetles and the splendid array of colorful butterflies, but some of the others are not so great. Mosquitoes live in the millions, sucking blood from anything that stands still, there are flies that lay their eggs under your skin or in wounds. Juliane’s advantage in this situation was that she knew how to survive in the jungle, because of her parents.

Now finally on her feet, Juliane looks around as much as she can with two swollen eyes, there is nothing in this area except the airplane seat that had accompanied Juliane to the ground. Juliane also realizes that she is only wearing one shoe, a white sandal with an open heel. Clogs, the worst in jungle footwear. Juliane decided to keep this one shoe on, after all she could barley see and she could use her foot with the shoe on it to prod ahead of herself, so she did not step on anything dangerous with her other bare foot. Juliane is wearing a thin minidress with a colorful patchwork pattern, the zipper in the back of the sleeveless dress is partially split open, as she reaches around to feel the back of her dress, she finds another flesh wound, this one is on the back of her arm where she can not quite see it, just like the gash on her leg, this wound is not bleeding either.

Soon, a powerful thirst began to overtake Juliane’s body, she sees the large droplets of water glistening on the leaves all around her and she begins to lap up all the water that she can. She has grown up in this jungle, it does not scare her, and she knows that she can conquer this obstacle before her, she just has to take her time and be careful. Normally when Juliane is out in the jungle, she would always have a machete with her, she would use this machete to mark trees in the forest as she went, creating her own version of Ariadne’s string to follow back incase she ever lost her way. Now, she did not have her machete and so she began to walk in small circles around the airplane seat, now resting on the forest floor. Working her way out from her central position, Juliane began to explore, and she was quickly astonished to find, nothing, there was nothing anywhere around her, no trace of the airplane she had been in, no people, or luggage, there was nothing. 

As she continued to search, Juliane finally made her first discovery, in the form of a bag of sweat treats, candies and a Peruvian Christmas Stollen. She opened the Stollen, knowing that the bready cake will fill her belly more than the pieces of candy, but the bread is soggy and caked in mud, the Christmas pastry tasted awful and so Juliane left it where she had found it, she pocketed the rest of the pieces of candy and she kept going on her search. All day and most of the afternoon, she does not venture far from the crash site, but she continues to search, she searched for food, for other survivors, but mostly Juliane searched for her mother. 

[Music Change – Search Planes]

As she stood in the crash site, the area which had become her home base, Juliane suddenly began hearing the hum of a distant plane engine. The plane is flying in a circular pattern over the jungle and Juliane immediately knew that they were looking for her. As she gazed up at the dense canopy of trees above her, she knew in her heart that they would never see her, the tree canopy was too dense. Emotions began to swell in the young woman and as the hum of the airplane engines began to drift into the distance, Juliane knew that she needed to get out of this impenetrable part of the forest.

Juliane sat, concentrating on the world around her, it was the rainy season, so a loud chorus of frogs constantly filled the air, but in a moment of quiet from her amphibious friends, Juliane heard a sound she had not heard before, [trickling water] the soft and constant trickling of water. 

Juliane knew that she had to locate this water, you can always follow water to people. Following the gurgling sound of water, Juliane soon found a small spring, which was feeding into a tiny rivulet.

The first thing Juliane does is quench her fierce thirst and then she uses the running water to give herself a quick washing. By this time Juliane has come to the decision that there are no other survivors within her immediate area. And due to the heavy forest canopy above her, search planes would never see her, and her father’s voice rang in her ears, “If you get lost in the jungle and you find flowing water, then stay near it, follow its course. It will bring you to other people.”

The tiny rivulet is very hard to follow, there are tree trunks laying across it and dense undergrowth blocked any clear way to walk along the water’s edge. But eventually the rivulet began opening up into a wider creek, the bed of this creek was dry in some areas, but still the water flowed, and Juliane walked in the empty flat portion of the creek bed. The day wore on and around 6 PM the sun began to sink below the horizon, Juliane located a simi dry portion of the creek bed where she could rest for the night. Although Juliane is a skilled person in the jungle, even she could not start a fire in these conditions, everything around her was soaked to its core. So, exhausted and hopelessly alone, Juliane fell asleep. The night was rough, insects nibbled at her skin, it rained cold rain, and the wind blew like a wolf trying to topple a house. 

[Music Change – Hans learns of the crash]

While Juliane braved nights in the jungle, news of the LANSA plane crash reached the Modena family, who traveled to Panguana to share the news with Hans, but Hans just shakes his head at this news and says, “My wife and daughter can’t possibly have been on board that plane. I specifically told them not to fly with LANSA. My wife never would have set foot on that plane!” 

[Radio clicking on]The next morning, Hans listened to a special report on the radio about the plane crash. When the radio host read the names of all of the LANSA passengers, Hans was shocked as he heard his beloved wife and cherished daughter’s names come through the airwaves and into his living room. 

[Music Change – Back in the jungle]

As Juliane awakes, she realizes that it is December 26th, boxing day and she needs to get a move on, she needs to get out of this jungle. She continues to follow the same stream, which winds its way back and forth through the forest. At one point she notices a large bird eating spider, and she is afraid that the spider may pounce on her and bite her, but she keeps a watchful eye on it and passes it without any confrontation. Finally, the steam widens even more and now the whole riverbed is filled with water. Juliane decided to walk in the water, always using her one shoed foot to step first, and she could still hear the search planes circling overhead. She knows that the canopy is still too dense for the planes to see her, but that does not stop her from screaming at the planes flying far above her head. She needs to keep following the river, eventually it would open up into a wider water way and maybe she could find an area where the trees would not obstruct the plane’s vision of her on the ground below. Juliane was also thinking that when she found a more open area, she may also find more survivors, her injuries were somewhat trivial, relatively speaking, and if she survived, surely there are other survivors as well. But how wrong she was.

On the third day after Juliane Koepcke fell from the sky, she found the first piece of plane wreckage, a turbine. The turbine was completely black on one side, was this the spot she had seen the lighting strike the plane, quite possibly, but she had to keep moving. Juliane noticed that her gold confirmation watch had now stopped working, she was lucky it had lasted this long. And then on the fourth day of Juliane’s trek through the jungle, she heard a noise that almost stopped her heart.

The loud flapping of wings was very distinct, it was a louder and heavier beating sound than any other bird, having an ornithologist as a mother, Juliane immediately recognized the sound of the King Vulture and if there was a King Vulture near, Juliane new that she was in for a horrific site. All Juliane could think about in this moment was her mother.  She exited her watery guide and began stealthily looking through the jungle around her.  It does not take long for her to locate the source of the sound and the reason it was there.  As Juliane comes around the next river bend, she sees a row of three airplane seats, just like hers.  

The difference between her maple leaf bench and this one, was that this bench was rammed, headfirst about three feet into the soft forest floor. And this bench was not empty. Still occupying these seats were three airplane passengers, two men and one woman, their heads were smashed down into the muddy forest floor, buried amongst the mud and muck, while their legs stuck out of the ground, standing at odd angles, like a pile of store mannequins piled into a bin. The site before her was horrifying, but Juliane knew that she had to go and check the bodies, she could tell that they were still intact and just off to the side, nested within the tree branches sat the king vultures. They were waiting and watching. In this moment a terrible thought flashes through Juliane’s mind, what if this woman was her mother. Juliane picked up a stick as she walked closer to the grotesque tableau before her, she had to look at the woman, she had to be sure. Juliane used the stick to turn the woman’s bare foot, as it swung to the side, Juliane was relieved to see that the woman had freshly painted toenails, her mother would never paint her toenails. It was also in this moment that Juliane realized how stupid she was being, how could this have possibly been her mother, her mother had been sitting next to her when the plane blew apart and sent her falling from the sky. After looking around the area for a bit longer, she decided to move on, the hum of the planes’ engines are still circling overhead and Juliane knew that she needed to hurry.

The water around Juliane’s feet begins to grow, she continues to walk in the water, always stepping first with her foot protected by her sandal. Each day is very much like the last, eventually she eats the last of the sweets she had found days ago, this was the last thing she had to eat and due to it being the rainy season, food from the forest was difficult to find. Much of what grows in the forest is poisonous and so Juliane simply avoids anything she does not recognize. Her thirst is now gone, she drinks all of the water she wants from the creek and I know what you are thinking, amebic dysentery, but I will tell you, you have been watching too much fake survival TV, this far out in the wild, even when the water looks a bit dirty, it can be safe to drink, because there are no humans around to pollute it. 

Juliane tried to keep track of the days, but after a few of them had gone by, it became harder for her to keep track. On the 5th or 6th day of her trek through the Peruvian Rainforest, Juliane heard a sound that filled her heart with excitement. This sound was once again a bird, but this was an unmistakable call that she recognized in an instant. 

The Hoatzin has a distinct call that sounds like a mixture of buzzing and grunting, some say it sounds like a bird that smokes two packs a day, but Juliane’s excitement was not due to how the bird sounds, but rather by how it lives. You see, these unique birds live exclusively near open stretches of water, like large rivers, where people also live.

Juliane focused in on the sounds of the hoatzins and she followed their sounds, soon enough her instincts prove correct and she finds a point where her stream began flowing into a larger river. The mouth of the river is marred by overgrowth and driftwood, blocking any way Juliane had to enter the new larger river. She had to make her way through the brush, following the sounds of the hoatzins and the sounds of the search planes always circling overhead. 

Hoatzins are very interesting birds; they build their nests over water and even as chicks they can swim very well. Like prehistoric birds, hoatzins still have claws on their wings, as babies if they fall from their nests, they can catch themselves by using their little claws and then they can crawl back into the safety of their nests. 

When Juliane finally reaches the new larger river, she estimates that it is 30 feet wide, but from this vantage point, she cannot see any humans in sight. The water in the river is filled with loose logs and driftwood, which made it very unsafe for Juliane to enter, but here the dense canopy of the forest opened up and Juliane could see the sky for the first time in almost a week. The low hum of the search plane’s engine was still there in the distance, but Juliane could not see any planes at first. As she stood on the river bank, one plane passed by at a distance, Juliane screamed and waved, but it was to no avail. They’ll come back, she tells herself, they have to come back. The constant sounds of the search planes overhead gave Juliane no hope, she knew they could not see her, but the sound was a comfort, at least she knew they were still looking. But now the sounds of the planes did not return and Juliane reconciled with herself some hard truths, they must have given up the search, they must had found and rescued all of the other survivors, everyone, but her.

Suddenly anger fills Juliane, it takes up every nook and cranny in her body where there was still room for feelings, how could they give up? How could they leave her here, now that she had finally found a clearing, now that she maybe had a chance of them noticing her, now they did not turn around, now, how could that be.  And then Juliane’s anger gave way to a wealth of despair. 

As she stood on the river bank, she looked back at the massive forest around her and she knew she had to stick with the river, where there’s a river, there will be people and Juliane knew that sooner or later, she would find those people.

[Music Change – The River]

The river would be her savior, Juliane knew that, but how should she proceed from here? The riverbank was too densely overgrown for her to be able to walk along the riverbank, and with only one shoe on, Juliane feared stepping on a poisonous snake in the tall grass, so she decided to wade through the shallower area of the water, close to the shore. To prepare for this escapade, Juliane looked for a long stick to take with her, she could use this to help balance herself in the flowing waters and she could prod ahead to check for river stingrays, which could be laying in wait to sting her foot, which would cause her leg to swell up rapidly. Not long after she had started making her way down the river, Juliane decided that she had mad a mistake, walking along the riverbank proved much more difficult than she anticipated. There were logs to climb over and slippery rocks that threatened to twist her ankle with every step. Eventually, Juliane decided to change tactics and she swam out into the deep middle section of the river. Here she did not have to worry about stepping on a sting ray and she could move with the speed of the flowing river. As she floated down the river, Juliane was still not afraid and somehow in this moment, her confidence started to return.

Each day around 5 o’clock the sun begins its slow decent over the horizon and each day Juliane begins to find a safe place to spend the inky black night, all alone. During the night, sleep is allusive, Juliane’s skin becomes a buffet for mosquitoes and other insects. The incessant buzzing around her head make sleep almost impossible, the pests attempt to crawl into her nose and ears, or even worse, sometimes it rains at night.

When the rain comes at night, the mosquitoes leave Juliane alone, but the pelting rain soak through her thin summer dress instantly and she is cold, chilled to the bone. Each drop of rain hits her skin like an icy pinprick and then comes the wind. These are the time when despair sets in and Juliane feels utterly alone. During her sleepless nights, Juliane thinks about her mother, had she been rescued already? How was she doing? How was her father? Had he even heard about the crash?

Juliane ruminates on how this whole mess was set into motion, she wonders where all of the other passengers were, where had the plane gone? And during these nights, Juliane prays, she prays for her mother, she prays to be rescued, she wants to live, with every fiber of her body, she knows that she wants to live.

The wounds Juliane had suffered during her fall from the sky had not really bothered her thus far, but now she began to notice the cut on her calf was swelling and the flesh had begun to turn a whitish color. Juliane strains her neck in an attempt to view the gash on her right upper arm and what she discovered, appalled her. She could see that the cut in her arm was now full of maggots, their tiny bodies protruding from the gash like little wiggly asparagus heads, and she knew that these maggots had to come out. Normally you can remove maggots from flesh by pouring some alcohol or kerosene into the wound, the maggots cannot breathe, so they crawl out of the skin to escape, but Juliane did not have either of those things, so she pulled out a silver spiral-shaped ring and she bent that into some make sift tweezers and she began pulling the small creatures from her body. 

This process does not go well, as soon as Juliane attempted to grab one of the parasites, they would burrow further down into her skin, so for now she would just keep swimming. As she continued floating down the river, she took note of the animals around the riverbanks, there were marten and deer and not far away she can hear a family of howler monkeys.

Hearing the howler monkeys was not a good sign, these are extremely shy animals and if they were so close to Juliane, she knew they had no fear of humans and that meant one thing, she was no where close to human civilization, these animals had never seen a human in their lives, and she may have to travel for many more miles before that fact changed.

When Juliane tries to remember how many days she has been in the forest, she cannot be sure, was it seven or eight? Either way she realizes that 1972 had probably already begun, she had missed New Years and celebrations which had taken place, welcoming in a new year.

During the day, Juliane continued to float and swim down the river. One morning she noticed a new sharp pain on her upper back, when she touches this spot with her hand, she can see that it is bleeding. As she spent the entire day in the water, her back had become very sunburnt and the skin was peeling, but there was nothing for her to do about it, so she just kept going. The current in the river was beginning to pick up, which meant she was covering more distance quicker, but she also had to be cautions, not to run into logs or other obstacles floating in the water.

To take a much-needed break, Juliane rested on a sandbank in the river, this seemed an ideal place to rest and Juliane was just about to doze off when she began to hear a very unique sound.

Juliane glances around and she sees several baby caimans facing her, I imagine Chris Pratt in Jurassic World holding off the three velociraptors by simply holding his hands up, but these baby caimans are only about 8 inches long each, so not a real threat, but momma is close by, a fully grown caiman resting very close to where Juliane was sleeping. Now, Juliane knew she was in some serious trouble. If the full-grown caiman saw her, she would charge at her and attack. The large reptile began to raise up onto her legs, and she began to advance towards Juliane, in response to this, Juliane slowly slid her body back into the river water and she began to float away from the powerful predator.  One thing Juliane had learned about Caimans during her time at Panguana was that caimans always flee into water, no matter where the danger is coming from and once in the water, their only goal is to escape.

As Juliane continued floating down the river, hunger began to overtake her thoughts. She had grown so weak that she could hardly stand when she did go ashore. As she sat on the damp riverbank, Juliane began to notice the small frogs jumping all around her and although the thought of eating one of these poisonous arrow frogs made her stomach turn, she still had to try. In her weakened state, she begins to grab at the frogs, but they are just too fast for her to grab, at one point there is a frog sitting just 6 inches from Juliane’s mouth and as she attempts to grab it, it effortlessly leaps away, and the depression in Juliane’s mind begins to overwhelm her. 

On the tenth day after Juliane Koepcke fell from the sky, she is once again floating down the river, she floats into logs in the river that she is forced to climb over, taking up even more of her almost completely exhausted energy level. As the evening arrived, she began looking for a spot on the riverbank to stay for the night, as she is floating by, Juliane notices a gravel riverbank that looks like an optimal place to stay for the night, so she swims over to the shore and pulls herself from the muddy waters. After Juliane is out of the water, it does not take long for her to curl up and attempt to take a nap. Juliane dozes off for just a few minutes and when her eyes blink open again, she notices something she had not seen before, something that seemed completely out of place, something that had been brought there by humans.

[Music Change – The Boat]

As Juliane’s eyes opened and her blurry vision focused ever so slightly, there, tied to the riverbank, was a boat. It was quite a large river boat, the kind used by local natives. Juliane assumes that she must be hallucinating, surely this boat was a mirage, like a sparkling clear lake in the middle of an arid dessert. She rubs her eyes and looks again, and as her eyes once again come into focus, it is still there, a boat.

Juliane slides her body back into the water and she swims over to the boat, it sat there gently bobbing in the slow-moving river water. The boat appeared to be brand new, but where had it come from? Juliane looked around through her swollen eyes and she focused on the riverbank beside the boat and then she saw it, a newly beaten trail from the river, up the bank about twenty yards long. She could even see footprints on the ground, human footprints. A new energy overtook Juliane, and she knew she needed to follow those footprints. But she was so physically drained that covering just those 20 yards took her several hours to complete.

As Juliane crests the top of the hill next to the river, she can finally see something else she recognizes, a tambo, a simply constructed shelter made of posts and a thatched roof, tree bark covered the ground under the roof and the entire structure was around 10 feet by 15 feet. Whitin the tambo, Juliane discovers the outboard motor for the boat tied up down at the river. This is a 40-horsepower motor and there is also a drum of gasoline sitting there for the motor. Juliane can see a clear path into the woods, and she knows that at some point these humans will be back for their boat, she would just have to wait. But as she looks at the gas can, the wiggling maggots inside of her wounds make themselves known again and Juliane knows that now she can at least attempt to get rid of some of her unwanted traveling companions.

It takes an excruciatingly long time to remove the cap to the gas can, but after she accomplished this feat, Juliane grabbed a small piece of hose on the ground, and she siphoned some gas from the can and dripped the noxious liquid into her open wound. As the liquid fills her wound, the maggots instinctively attempt to burrow themselves further into her flesh, until they realize there is nowhere to run and then they start wiggling back out of the open wound, attempting to find fresh oxygen. As the pests appear at the surface of her wound, Juliane uses her bent key ring to pull as many of the maggot from her flesh as she can, after she finishes field dressing her wound, she is exhausted and decides that it is time for her to get some sleep. It was now dark, and the owners of the boat had still not returned. 

The bark lining the tambo floor was hard to lay on, so Juliane takes a tarp from the hut and makes her way back down to the soft sandy bank of the river. With a tarp to cover her and protect her from the rain, the mosquitoes and the gnats, this was the best sleep Juliane has had in well over a week, that night she slept better that if she was at a 5-star hotel.

The next morning, as the sun rose over the horizon, Juliane woke up, the owners of the boat had still not returned. Now a new fear crept into Juliane’s mind, what if the owners of the boat did not return for several weeks. For just a moment she considers taking the boat so she can travel down river faster, but that does not sit well with her, she was not a thief, no matter what her circumstances. What if the owner of the boat showed back up and now, they were stranded out here, he would need his boat just as much as she would. 

[Heavy Rain]

And then it began to rain again. Juliane sat in the tambo and covered herself with the tarp and in her fatigued state, she simply felt nothing. Occasionally, a frog would hop by, and Juliane would make a half-hearted effort to catch it, but she was never successful. The rain lasts all day and only stops in the late afternoon. Juliane knows she cannot stay here forever and that she must move on, but she cannot even force herself to move and so she just sits there, and she does not move. She sits there and wallows, she is sure everyone else from the flight had been found long ago, she thinks that she is the only one still out here, trying to survive, trying to get home to her family and she worries that she may die out here and that her family would never know what happened to her. 

The sun begins to disappear behind the horizon as Juliane sits in the tambo, frogs jump all around her, it is almost like they are mocking her and her inability to catch one of them, when suddenly Juliane hears something, voices, human voices. At first, she thinks she is hallucinating, but then as she looks around she sees three men emerge from the dense woods. The men walk directly to the tambo and when they see Juliane sitting in their hut, they visibly recoil at the site of her. Juliane looks at the men and she says in Spanish, “I’m a girl who was in the LANSA crash, my name is Juliane.” The men get closer, observing Juliane in astonishment.

All Juliane Koepcke could think was, she had survived, she was safe and now she could go home.

Join us next week for the conclusion of this amazing story of survival and learn if Juliane is the Sole Survivor of LANSA Flight 508, until then, we dance round in a ring a suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.

Resources:

When I Fell From the Sky: Juliane Koepcke, Ross Benjamin: 9780983754701: Amazon.com: Books. (n.d.). https://www.amazon.com/When-Fell-Sky-Juliane-Koepcke/dp/0983754705

Koepcke, J. (2013, September 13). Juliane Koepcke fell 10,000ft to earth after plane crash and lived. Mail Online. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2418765/Juliane-Koepcke-fell-10-000ft-earth-plane-crash-lived.html

Lidz, F. (2023, June 15). She Fell Nearly 2 Miles, and Walked Away. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/18/science/koepcke-diller-panguana-amazon-crash.html

Juliane Koepcke. (2024, January 14). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliane_Koepcke

Maria Koepcke. (2023, October 14). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Koepcke

Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke. (2024, January 27). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Wilhelm_Koepcke

Líneas Aéreas Nacionales S.A. (2024, February 8). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%ADneas_A%C3%A9reas_Nacionales_S.A.

LANSA Flight 501. (2024, January 2). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LANSA_Flight_501

LANSA Flight 502. (2023, September 7). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LANSA_Flight_502

LANSA Flight 508. (2024, January 19). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LANSA_Flight_508

Wings of Hope (film). (2023, August 4). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wings_of_Hope_(film)

Juliane Koepcke: How I survived a plane crash. (2012, March 24). BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17476615

R. (2024, January 16). The Story of Juliane Koepcke: How a Teenager Survived 11 Days in the Amazon Jungle After a Plane Crash in 1971. Rare Historical Photos. https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/juliane-koepcke-surviving-story/

Mateo Pumacahua. (2024, January 24). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mateo_Pumacahua

A. (2022, November 28). Yacumama – the myths around the mysterious giant serpent that dwells in the Amazonian waters. The Archaeologist. https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/yacumama-the-myths-around-the-mysterious-giant-serpent-that-dwells-in-the-amazonian-waters