A Colombian mother and her three children survived 34 days lost in the Peruvian jungle, barely surviving only on berries, seeds and plants.
The four were on their way back from a visit with relatives in a remote area near the Peru-Colombia border, the BBC reports.
They became disoriented and got lost, leading to more than a month of wandering before they were discovered by members of the Secoya Indigenous group near the village of Yubito.
Noticias Caracol, a Colombian broadcast company, said the unnamed mother had arranged to meet up with her husband to travel back across the border from Puerto Leguízamo.
When she failed to show up, her husband reported his family members missing.
Per the BBC, the Indigenous group reported the family members to the Peruvian navy. They informed their Colombian counterpart, which sent a hovercraft to pick up the mother and children to bring them home.
The footage shared by the local broadcast station shows malnourished and dehydrated children being lifting in stretchers and reunited with their father at the naval base in Puerto Leguízamo.
“If we didn’t have water every 30 minutes, we’d faint,” the mother can be heard saying in Spanish. “We had to keep stopping all the time and the girls couldn’t walk anymore.”
The BBC says Gen. Sergio Alfredo Serrano of the Colombian navy said the family had bites and stings all over their bodies, as well as cuts on their feet.
They are currently being treated in hospital and undergoing tests for mosquito-borne illnesses like malaria and yellow fever.
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