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The four Indigenous children who survived 40 days in the Amazon jungle after their plane crashed were recovering Sunday in a military hospital in Colombia, as new details of their harrowing story emerged in a country still mesmerized by their saga.
The kids, aged 13, 9 and 4 years and 11 months, are expected to remain for at least two weeks in a hospital receiving treatment after their rescue Friday, but some are already speaking and wanting to do more more than lying on a bed, according to family members.
Manuel Ranoque, father of the two youngest children, told reporters outside the hospital Sunday that the oldest of the four surviving children – 13-year-old Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy – told him their mother was alive for about four days after the plane crashed on May 1 in the Colombian jungle.
Ranoque said before she died, the mother likely would have told them: “go away,” apparently asking them to leave the wreckage site to survive. He provided no more details.
Fidencio Valencia, a child’s uncle, told media outlet Noticias Caracol the children were starting to talk and one of them said they hid in tree trunks to protect themselves in a jungle area filled with snakes, animals and mosquitoes. He said they were exhausted.
“They at least are already eating, a little, but they are eating,” he said after visiting them at the military hospital in Bogota, Colombia. A day earlier, Defense Minister Iván Velásquez had said the children were being rehydrated and couldn’t eat food yet.
