Lost in the Rainforest | Man of Action | 3
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A listener note: Against the Odds uses dramatizations that are based on true events. Some elements, including dialogue, may be invented, but everything is based on historical research. Yossi Ginzburg peers down a narrow path deep within the Bolivian jungle. Rain patters on his poncho.

It's December 12, 1981, and he's been alone, lost, and hungry for almost two weeks. But today, he's feeling optimistic. The source of his optimism is this path, which is well-marked by machete cuts on the tree trunks. The path should lead to a village called San Jose, about a four-day hike from here. At least, that's according to Carl, the jungle guide Yossi parted with two weeks ago.

Yossi hums an Israeli pop song as he walks. He'd been praying to be saved, but today he's confident he can save himself. Once he reaches San Jose, he'll arrange transportation back to La Paz. He just hopes his friend, Kevin Gale, is okay. He and Kevin got separated when their raft entered a rough stretch of whitewater 12 days ago. But who knows? Maybe Kevin will be waiting for him in San Jose.

Yossi quickens his pace. He's feeling strong after resting for two days in an abandoned mining camp. He thinks that if he walks fast enough, maybe he can get to San Jose in three days, not four. The path he's following runs parallel to the Tuichi, a wide and muddy river that winds through this northern Bolivian jungle. It's the same river whose rapids almost killed him 12 days ago.

The path begins to snake away from the river and deeper into the jungle, which makes Yossi a little nervous. Soon he can no longer see or even hear the tuichi, but the gashes on the trees are there, so he keeps going. The path seems to be getting narrower, and he has to stop more often to search for the next machete mark. Two hours later, he hears it. It's the tuichi. He almost sobs with relief. He's making good progress.

Then, he looks down and sees a boot print. "It's Kevin," he thinks. "He must be ahead of me. We're both saved." He looks up toward the patch of sky, visible through the jungle canopy. The rain feels cool on his face. Then, he looks back down at the boot print. It's been raining all day. Why hasn't the boot print washed away? He places his own foot next to the boot print. It's an exact match.

The terrible truth dawns on him. These tracks aren't Kevin's. They're his. He's just spent hours walking in a massive circle. Yossi drops to his knees in despair.

All those hours, all that energy, wasted. What he thought was a single path to San Jose must be a maze of jungle trails, all leading to God knows where. He looks around, wondering what to do next. He could try to find his way back to Curri Playa, the abandoned mining camp where he spent the last two nights, and wait there for rescue.

But he shakes his head. He's tired of backtracking and going in circles. No, he needs to get back to the river and follow it downstream until he gets to San Jose. With that thought, he shoulders his pack and starts following the trail downhill, hoping it will lead him back to the river. If he's going to survive this ordeal, he has to be a man of action. He has to keep going.

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In 1981, 22-year-old Yossi Ginsberg and his friend Kevin Gale were rafting down a remote river in the Bolivian jungle when a series of rapids separated them. Yossi found himself alone in the rainforest with no survival skills and barely any food. As Kevin desperately tried to mount a rescue party, Yossi wandered through the jungle, lost and starving.

He had come to the Bolivian rainforest in search of adventure. Now, he'd be lucky to escape with his life. This is episode three, Man of Action.

Kevin Gale sits in a reception area outside the Austrian consul's office in La Paz, Bolivia. It's been four days since he managed to escape the jungle and fly back to La Paz. Since then, he's been taking taxis from embassy to embassy and from the office of the Bolivian Navy to the headquarters of the Bolivian Air Force. He keeps telling the same story to anyone who will listen. His friend is lost and needs help.

He wants to launch a search party for Yossi Ginsburg, but everybody he meets passes him on to someone else. The bureaucracy enrages him. Don't they realize that every second counts? It's December 14th, two weeks since he last saw Yossi. Is he still alive? Kevin has no idea, but he can't give up on him. The consul will see you now. Kevin stands and hurries into the office.

Okay.

Kevin sighs and tells the story yet again. How Carl, who said he was a geologist, had offered to guide Kevin, Yossi, and another backpacker named Marcus Stamm deep into the jungle to look for gold and meet indigenous tribes. How the group decided to split up, with Carl and Marcus returning to civilization on foot, and Kevin and Yossi continuing by raft.

How he and Yossi got separated when the raging river carried Yossi over a waterfall while Kevin watched helplessly from the shore.

He leans forward in his chair. "'We need to organize a search party. Maybe two. One for Yossi and one for Carl and Marcus. When I got back to La Paz, I went to the hotel where they told us they would leave word, but they never arrived.' The man laughs. "'That's a good one. You want us to help you look for Carl Reprector?' Kevin nods. The man just smiles."

Kevin is livid.

But what about Marcus? He doesn't deserve to be left in the jungle just because he's with Carl. A few years ago, Mr. Repractor led another man on one of these expeditions, then abandoned him in the jungle. The man would have died if he hadn't stumbled upon some friendly locals. I'm sorry about your friend, Mr. Gale, but we can't help you.

The Consul stands up, shakes Kevin's hand, and shows him to the door. Kevin emerges from the Austrian embassy onto the bustling sidewalks of La Paz. The sun is warm on his face. He thinks of Yossi, and of Karl, and Markus. He felt confident that Karl and Markus would make it out. But now that he's heard what Karl has done in the past, he's desperately worried for Markus.

He wonders if he'll see any of them again. Yossi Ginsberg cowers as a massive thunderclap shakes the jungle. The rain has started yet again, and fat raindrops lash his face. But he's in luck.

He's come across the remains of an old campsite, two poles sticking out of the ground, tied together with vines. He scrambles to find palm fronds he can weave between the vines. It won't keep out all the rain, but it'll help. Lightning flashes, followed by another crack of thunder. Yossi gasps, but not in fear.

Earlier, he slipped going down a steep hill and impaled his backside on a dead tree branch. The pain is still agonizing. Blood soaks his tattered blue jeans.

It's December 15th, three days since he wasted almost a whole day hiking in a circle. From there, he retraced his path back to the Tui Chi River. When he finally found it, he resolved that from now on, he would not let the river out of earshot, no matter what. He'd follow it to San Jose. Yossi grabs armfuls of palm fronds and stumbles back to the campsite.

The rain is torrential, pelting him in stinging jabs. He glances through the trees toward the Tu'ichi and can see the river has grown wide and muddy from all the rain.

According to what Carl told him, San Jose is on the other side, so at some point he'll have to cross it. But it looks too dangerous now. The rain needs to stop before he can attempt it. Yossi huddles under the makeshift shelter. Amazingly, his palm frond roof seems to be working. But then he feels the earth under him growing muddier. Rainwater is pooling beneath him.

He squeezes his eyes shut and prays, "Please God, help me. I don't want to die." He tries to calm down by picturing a life for himself away from this. He imagines being married, being a dad, raising his children back home in Israel. He imagines him and his brother working on a ranch in Galilee. It's bliss.

Then a tree crashes to the ground nearby, shaking him from his fantasy. All around him, he hears the terrible sound of more trees falling. The storm must be uprooting them. He feels like he could be crushed at any moment. He rocks back and forth and tries to picture himself in Galilee as darkness falls and the jungle seems to tear itself apart.

At dawn, Yossi emerges from his makeshift shelter and peers through the rain at his surroundings. He doesn't recognize what he sees. The Tuichi River, swollen from rain, has overflowed its banks. Its surface is clogged with so many roots and fallen trees that it looks like he could reach the other side by jumping from log to log.

but the current is so swift that he dare not try. Still, he has to cross it somehow if he's going to get to San Jose. Maybe farther downstream, it'll narrow enough to allow him to cross. He sets out, but he doesn't get far. So much rain has fallen that it's created a new river flowing down the jungle hillside into the Tuiches.

It's so wide, he can't cross it. He stumbles through the rain back to his campsite. He'll just have to wait until the storm subsides. He lies down, listens to the rain slapping the palm fronds, and tries to ignore his grumbling stomach. But then he feels water on his sides and under his back. It's pooling around him.

He sits up, realizing in horror that the T'uichi and the New River are merging into one, right where he's camped. The water is rising fast. He stands up, but in seconds it's around his ankles, then his thighs, then his waist. It's a flash flood. He loops an arm through the life pack and clutches the trunk of a tree. Already, the current is strong enough to sweep him away. So he hangs on to the tree for dear life.

The water is still rising. It's up to his chest. He's too weak to climb the tree, and besides, it could fall over, like the many others. He needs to find higher ground. He lets go of the tree and pushes through the water as it keeps rising. Soon, he can no longer touch the ground. He struggles on, paddling frantically from tree to tree.

Finally, he feels Earth underfoot again. He keeps going until the water is back down to his thighs. With each step, his feet sink into the sodden Earth. He feels mud and stones collecting in his boots. All around him, the landscape is transformed. What was once dense jungle is now a muddy swamp. The noise of frogs is deafening. He hears them, but he can't spot a single one. He wonders if he's going insane.

But he continues on, heading uphill, away from the Tu'ichi.

Kevin Gale grips his armrest. He's on a small prop plane, accelerating down a dirt runway cut out of the jungle. It's December 17th, 17 days since he last saw Yossi. But Kevin won't give up. The Bolivian military finally agreed to fly him from La Paz to the jungle town of Trinidad. And now an Air Force pilot is taking him up and over the Tuichi River to see if there's any sign of Yossi.

They were supposed to take off yesterday, but the rain has been so bad in this part of the jungle that the runway was flooded. Even today, the pilot didn't want to go, but Kevin insisted. The pilot just shook his head and told him it was a waste of fuel.

Now that they're airborne, Kevin begins to realize the futility of the search. Hundreds of miles of jungle canopy stretch out in every direction, interlaced with muddy rivers that coil through the mist far below. He asks the pilot to follow the Tuichi, but the mountains surrounding the river force the pilot to climb higher. The pilot shouts back at him. That's the Tuichi! Tuichi!

Kevin peers down, but from this height, it might as well be a brown thread stitched across an endless canvas of green. He scans the horizon. Maybe Yossi has lit a signal fire, but there's no smoke. At least none he can see from here. They make a few passes, but Kevin can see that there's no point. Wherever Yossi is, there's no way they can see him from the air.

Yossi Ginzburg screams up at the sky, even though he knows he can't be heard. Above him is the drone of an airplane, but he's still under a thick jungle canopy. I'm here! Here! Don't go!

Yossi stumbles ahead, ignoring the pain in his feet. He's so weak from hunger, he can barely walk. He's eaten nothing for two days. Before, he'd been lucky to find bird eggs or fruit trees. But the storm has washed everything away.

He spent hours yesterday trudging through the flooded jungle in search of dry land. Each step took him further from his destination of San Jose. But he had no choice. He had to escape the flood. Today, the waters have receded somewhat, leaving soggy jungle floor behind. So he's trying to get back to the river again. He's been searching for water flowing downhill, figuring it will lead him to the Tuichi.

The plane passes overhead again. Yossi keeps running, as if by some miracle he'll emerge onto a clearing and be spotted. But there's nothing but jungle. He peers up, and in the gap between two massive trees, he spots a small white plane. I'm here! I'm here! But the plane passes out of sight, and the drone fades.

Soon, the only sounds are his own exhausted breathing and the constant buzz of the jungle. He collapses to the ground, pressing his face into the mud. He wants to cry, but the tears won't come. He prays, but for the first time, he doesn't pray for rescue. Instead, he prays for death. ♪♪

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Head over to Symbiotica.com and use code "Odds" for 20% off and free shipping on your subscription order. Yossi Ginzburg stands on a high bluff overlooking the Tuichi. The rain has stopped, but the river is still raging. He sits down on a log, watching as the river rushes by 20 feet below him. It's been 18 days now since he was separated from Kevin.

Could his friend possibly still be looking for him? Or did he perish in the jungle? Kevin is tough, but given everything Yossi's been through, it's entirely possible Kevin could have drowned in the T'uichi, or been attacked by a jaguar, or crushed under a falling tree. He takes stock of what the jungle has done to his body.

A dull ache still radiates from his backside, where a branch impaled him days ago. And his feet are blistered, swollen, and constantly wet, making every step agony. A rash is spreading across his body, and a cut near his wrist is oozing pus. "My body is rotting," he thinks. After spotting the plane yesterday, Yossi decided on a new plan of action.

He's not going to continue downriver in search of San Jose anymore. Instead, he's going to backtrack to a stretch of beach alongside the Tuichi that he passed a few days ago. If it's not underwater from the storm, he can just stay there. He'll be easier to spot from the air if he's out in the open on the riverbank. Yossi hauls himself to his feet and starts walking.

He moves inland to avoid the flooded lowlands, hoping he'll be able to double back to the river and locate the beach. Still, there's no escaping the effects of the storm. Even away from the river, the earth beneath his feet is sodden, slowing his progress. He reaches a fallen tree and realizes he's too weak to climb over it. He'll have to walk around it.

He's just made it around the tree when he steps with both feet into a puddle. Only, it's not a puddle. It's some kind of b-- In seconds, he's sunk past his knees in dense mud. He can't pull himself out.

He reaches for nearby branches, reeds, bushes, anything to grab onto. But everything just snaps off in his hands. He reaches with both arms into the muck to see if he can physically lift a leg out. But it's no use. His legs are stuck. He's swallowed in mud up to his stomach. He feels like he's paralyzed from the waist down. He stops struggling and takes a deep breath.

I may die here, he thinks, but I can decide how. He reaches around to unstrap the life pack from his shoulders and sticks a hand inside. There are still 20 or so pills in the container marked Uppers, plus other pills he can't even identify. He'll take them, all of them, and pray that they kill him before he drowns in the mud. But then he thinks of his parents...

If he dies here, his body will just sink into the earth, never to be found. His mother and father will live out their days not knowing what became of their son. Besides, it would be foolish to give up now, after managing to survive it this long. What if he's close to rescue? It could be a day away, even an hour away. He has to keep fighting.

Yossi shoves the pill bottle back in his bag and stretches his arms forward as if he were swimming.

He tries again to kick his legs and feels a slight movement at his feet. With every ounce of his remaining strength, he strains, loosening the mud's grip. He moves forward, first by millimeters, then by inches. He doesn't know how long it takes. An hour? Longer? But at last, his arms reach solid ground. He digs his fingers into the earth, straining to free his legs from the quagmire.

Finally, he pulls one foot free, then the other, and collapses, exhausted. His body is caked in sticky black mud. He spits some of it onto the jungle floor. He's so weak from the effort that he can barely move. But he's still alive. Yossi crawls on all fours through the jungle. His feet are in such pain, he can't bear to put weight on them.

It's evening, and he's gathering palm fronds to sleep on. As he arranges the fronds on the ground, he lays out two places to sleep. One for him, and one for his companion, a young woman. When he's done, he looks over and sees her curled up under a bush, looking thin and fragile. He knows he has to be strong for her. He calls out to her, gently.

Come here. I'll hold you tight and keep you safe.

He starts crawling towards her, but as he gets closer, he sees that what looked like her arms are just the limbs of a bush. What looked like her dark hair is just a shadow. She's not there.

She was never there. "You're alone, you idiot," he tells himself. He wonders if the fantasies he's been having are driving him mad, or if they're the only thing keeping him sane. He lays down on the palm fronds and imagines himself back in the hostel in La Paz, frying onions for breakfast, then cracking eggs on top of them and melting cheese. He's so hungry.

But the only rice left in the life pack is moldy and rancid. He drifts off, hoping that he's close to that stretch of open beach. That tomorrow, he'll reach it. He'll arrange a sign with rocks in the sand. He'll eat from the fruit trees growing nearby. A plane will swoop down from the sky and carry him away. He wakes suddenly with an urgent need to pee. He's too exhausted and weak to move.

Ow!

Then another sting, this time near his waist. Then another near his knee. Each time he grabs one ant and squishes it, another two seem to take its place. How did you get in here? Get out! As usual, Yossi has wrapped himself in mosquito netting in a poncho. But somehow, the ants have found their way in.

They attack him everywhere. On his feet, on his scalp, even near his eyes. Yossi is shocked by the strength of their pincers. Each time he pulls one off, the insect takes a piece of his flesh with it. Yossi forgets about his hunger and exhaustion. Instead, he's consumed with one thought: to kill every last one of these damn ants. He pulls each one from his body and dismembers it.

He imagines their little ant corpses piling up in the darkness. But no matter how fast he kills them, they keep coming. Kevin Gale hurries along a dirt road in Rurinabake toward a big thatched roof building that houses the local naval office. Bolivia is landlocked, but its navy is responsible for patrolling the thousands of miles of rivers that course through the country, including the Tuichi, the last place Kevin saw Yossi Ginsberg.

Kevin wraps on the wooden door, and a uniformed man emerges. He does not look happy to see him. "'I was told you'd be coming. Didn't my colleague in the Air Force take you up in a plane?' "'Sir, the flight was pointless. We couldn't fly low enough to see anything, and we were only up there for an hour.' The commander shakes his head. "'Look, I admire your loyalty to your friend, but he is surely dead.'

Kevin ignores him. We need to take a boat upriver. That's the only way we can find him. I'm sorry, but that's out of the question. Military boats are forbidden from traveling up the Tuichi. The rapids make it too dangerous, practically impossible, and the storm has made conditions worse. Besides, I'm not going to endanger the lives of my men just to recover a body.

Kevin has never felt so powerless. His last hopes of finding Yossi alive are fading fast. He opens his mouth to speak, but realizes he has nothing left to say. The commander looks at him for a moment, then sighs. There is one other option. Hire the King of the River to take you. Kevin's confused. King of the River? The commander beckons Kevin to follow him. He feels a flicker of hope.

Perhaps all is not lost. Yossi opens his eyes in the gray light of dawn. Somehow, despite the pain from the biting insects, he must have fallen back asleep. He sits up to look around and freezes, stunned. The ground around him appears to be moving, oozing like a red, rippling wave. He jumps to his feet, pulling the mosquito net off of him.

It too is covered in a red, seething mass. It's a colossal swarm of insects. That's what's been biting him all night. Fire ants. Millions of them. In a panic, he grabs his gear and dashes away, then stops to look back. The ants are everywhere, swarming the ground that was his campsite, moving up the trees, climbing over each other. Ravenous.

He spends the next 15 minutes scraping ants from his body and from his gear. They're even digging into the leather soles of his shoes. He sets about crushing each one he sees. Then he catches the odor. It's not from the ants. It's him.

He remembers something Carl has said. Urine attracts insects. He had relieved himself in his pants, and the smell had attracted the ants. He shudders, imagining himself covered in a thick blanket of swarming ants, eaten alive by the hungry insects. But that's not what happened. Somehow, once again, he survived.

He hoists his bag and starts to walk, as fast as his aching feet can carry him. Kevin stands at the prow of a small motorboat and scans the riverbanks, searching for Yossi. It's December 20th, and they're gliding up the Tuichi. In the boat with him are three Bolivians, including the boat's captain, a burly man named Tico, known to locals as the "King of the River."

Tico earned the nickname because he knows every twist and turn along the Tuichi. So when Kevin asked if he could take him upriver, dozens of miles to search for his missing friend, the man didn't hesitate. Tico's boat is basically a glorified canoe with an outboard motor. His two crew members sit on either side, poking long poles into the water, feeling for submerged rocks.

When they first started out yesterday, they made good time. The river was wide and calm. They camped on a beach overnight, then continued on this morning. At about 10:30 a.m., they reached San Jose, but still no Yossi. Now, Tico is taking it slower. The flood has uprooted trees and torn down branches, which float past them as the boat chugs upriver.

Even Tico, who's lived here his whole life, says he's never seen flooding like this. Kevin fixes his gaze on a distant shoreline. Vultures are pecking at what looks like a carcass in the sand. A shudder runs through him. Could that be Yossi? He can't bear to look. He exchanges glances with Tico, who squints towards the vultures, then shakes his head. No, not a body. They motor on.

Every few minutes, Kevin calls out his friend's name. Yossi! Yossi! The only responses are monkey shrieks and bird cries. When Tico first agreed to take him upriver, Kevin felt a surge of optimism. Finally, someone who shared his belief that Yossi could still be alive and that they could find him

But now, after nearly two days on the river, Kevin feels his optimism waning. No matter how much he wants to believe otherwise, he's starting to accept that Yossi is probably dead.

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Yossi Ginsberg runs his fingers across his forehead and discovers a soft lump above his eyebrow.

"Did I hit my head?" he wonders. He doesn't remember doing that. All he knows is that every once in a while, it throbs with a sharp pain. He's been hiking for hours, ever since he left the swarming ants behind. And now, he finally hears it. The tuichi.

He breaks through the last bit of undergrowth and sees the river. It's still surging and impossibly wide, but at least the rain has stopped. He looks down from the bluff. There's a beach here, and in the middle of it stands a single-thatched roof hut, leaning to the side as if it wants to fall over. But it's shelter. Yossi scrambles down the embankment, past a few small trees, and makes his way across the rocky beach to the hut.

He feels like he's been here before, but he can't place it. He steps through the doorway of the hut and places his pack down in the cool of the shade. Then he walks to the river, removes his boots, and soaks his swollen feet in the water.

He dries his feet in the sun, then squeezes them back into his shoes. He pulls himself up and starts walking back toward the hut. Then something catches his eye. In the bark of a tree trunk, someone has carved the initials P.A.M. Yossi can't believe it. He's returned to Kuripalaya, the abandoned mining camp.

He remembers this tree trunk and these very letters. That explains the deja vu. The camp originally had a small cluster of huts, but the flooding must have swept away all but one of them. He surveys the surroundings.

This is as good a place as any to wait for rescue. It's close to the river, and he can make a sign on the beach for planes to spot. But first, he needs rest. He gathers some pieces of bark from the riverbank, drags them into the hut, and fashions a bed for himself. He lies down, grateful for the shelter from the afternoon heat, and dozes off.

Yossi wakes to the sound of helicopter rotors and scrambles to his feet. It must be a rescue crew searching for him. He bursts from the open doorway of the hut and races down the rocky beach toward the noise. But it's gone. He feels a familiar sense of despair. It wasn't a helicopter after all. It was just another dream or a delusion. Whatever it was, it wasn't real.

Yossi trudges back to the hut. He needs to think. Before he left on this journey all those weeks ago, he sent a note to his brother Moshe in Israel. He told Moshe that if he didn't hear from Yossi by early January, it meant trouble.

That's still two weeks away, and then probably several weeks more for his brother to organize a search party. Could he survive that long? Yes, he's starving, literally. But people don't just lie down and die, do they? Not in a place like the Amazon rainforest, where there's water and food all around.

As he sits in the shade of the thatched roof, a plan emerges. He'll wait on this beach for his rescue. He can be seen from the air. And if someone goes by on a boat, he can wave them down. And eventually, miners will return to Curri Playa once the rainy season is over. He imagines their reaction when they see him. In the meantime, he can teach himself how to survive.

He can gather fruit. He'll find nests with wild chicken eggs. He'll fashion a slingshot to kill game. He'll fish. He'll be a modern-day Robinson Crusoe. He'll become the adventurer he'd always dreamed of being.

He runs a hand down his stomach and pulls up his tattered shirt. His ribs are protruding, separated from his fingers by the thinnest layer of skin. He wonders if his fantasies of living in the jungle are just that, delusions brought on by starvation. He has to admit the truth. He doesn't want to be Robinson Crusoe. He wants to be rescued, and he's not sure he can hold out much longer.

Kevin glances back at Tico, the boat captain. They're nearing the end of their second day searching for Yossi. Tico steers the boat towards the shore. Does he see something? But no. Tico's two crew members are stopping for a bathroom break. They wade ashore, rifles slung over their shoulders. Kevin feels his leg twitching with impatience. Then the men disappear into the jungle. He looks at Tico.

Where did they go? Quick break to shoot some game. Kevin is outraged. No! I'm paying you and we're not stopping. He looks around. Nightfall is coming. And Tico has already told Kevin that tomorrow he needs to head back to Rurunabake. Kevin doesn't want to waste a minute of daylight on anything except searching for his friend. Tico looks at Kevin, then calls out to his men.

After a few minutes, they emerge, looking annoyed. Tico tells them to get back in the boat. They're going on. Kevin resumes his post at the front of the boat, scanning each shoreline. As the light dims, the colors of the jungle fade into shades of gray and brown. He turns back to Tico, who shakes his head sadly.

We have to turn back at the next beach. Soon we'll be reaching the rapids, and my boat can't travel up them. I'm sorry, Kevin. Try. Kevin nods. He feels a lump in his throat, and tears start to well in his eyes. He wonders how he'll live the rest of his life, knowing that he abandoned his friend to die. Tico guns the engine a little harder, and Kevin feels the boat speed up. This is it. Their last chance.

Yossi stretches out on the floor of his hut, wrapped in a mosquito net, and seized with terrible abdominal pains. His guts feel like they're on fire. He knows he must be suffering from malnutrition, and he wonders what it's doing to his insides. He thinks he hears something. He listens closer. He's been so delirious with hunger that he no longer trusts his senses. He conjured an imaginary female companion to keep him company.

He's imagined huge feasts and tried to remember the smells of cooking food. So he's probably dreaming this sound too, but it won't go away. He thinks it must be a bee. He pulls the mosquito net down from his face and looks around. The noise is louder. It's not a bee.

Hello?

Hello? His voice is so weakened by fatigue and hunger, he doubts they can hear him. But then, he sees a figure point to him, and Yossi starts to wave. They see him. They're coming closer. He hears someone call out to him, in English. Don't move, Yossi. Stay where you are. I'm coming. It's Kevin.

As the boat nears the shore, he jumps into the water and comes splashing toward Yossi. Yossi feels himself collapse into Kevin's arms. He can't believe it. He's saved.

In the three weeks that Yossi Ginsburg wandered alone in the Bolivian jungle, he lost 55 pounds. In Rurinabake, doctors removed leeches from his skin and treated him for trench foot. They also removed worms that had burrowed under his skin, hatched from eggs spread by botflies, including one right above his eyebrow.

The rains that flooded the Tuichi had ironically allowed Kevin's rescue boat to go further upriver than would normally have been safe. The flooding had almost killed Yossi, but it also helped save him. When Yossi and Kevin Gale flew back to La Paz, they immediately went to the hotel where they had agreed to meet Marcus Stamm and Karl Reprechter. But there was no sign of them, or any sign they had ever returned.

Kevin organized a second search party, but they turned up no trace of Carl or Marcus. Yossi returned to Rurunabake six years later in 1987. He investigated reports that Carl had been spotted in the town of Santa Cruz, but Yossi's search for Carl turned up nothing. To this day, what happened to Carl and Marcus remains a mystery.

but they are presumed to have died somewhere in the jungle. In the 1990s, Yossi helped spearhead the development of an eco-village along the Tuichi called Chalalon. By that time, Yossi had written his book Jungle, and he leveraged his notoriety to help secure funding for the project. In 2017, Yossi's book was adapted into a feature-length film, also called Jungle.

Starring Daniel Radcliffe as Yossi. Today, Yossi lives in Israel. He still travels the world, both as an ecological entrepreneur and a motivational speaker. Kevin Gale married an Israeli woman and moved to Israel. Every year on the anniversary of the day he was rescued, Yossi writes Kevin a letter to thank him once again for saving his life.

On our next episode, we'll hear from Yossi Ginsberg himself about what it was like to be alone for three weeks in the Bolivian rainforest. His book is called Jungle, a harrowing true story of survival in the Amazon.

This is episode three of our three-part series, Lost in the Rainforest. A quick note about our scenes. In most cases, we can't know exactly what was said, but everything is based on historical research. If you'd like to learn more about this event, we highly recommend the book Jungle by Yossi Ginsberg.

I'm your host, Cassie DePeckel. Steve Fennessy wrote this episode. Our editor is Alyssa Adams. Script consulting by Yossi Ginsberg. Sound design and Dolby Atmos mix by Outhouse Audio. Audio engineer is Sergio Enriquez. Coordinating producer is Desi Blalock. Produced by Alita Rosansky and Emily Frost. Managing producer is Matt Gant. Senior managing producer is Ryan Lohr.

Senior producer is Andy Herman. Executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman, Stephanie Jens, and Marshall Louis. For Wondery.

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