Antonio was trapped in the lush jungle of the Amazon after the plane he was traveling in failed and fell. He was unharmed, but he wandered and survived for 36 days thanks to an improvised machete and the monkeys’ eating habits.
It was a Monday in January when pilot Antonio Sena suffered a plane crash in the bowels of the Brazilian Amazon. There, in the immensity of the jungle, he was trapped for 36 days, surviving with a machete and the help of monkeys, which he observed in his search for food.
Sena, 36, was hired to run an air taxi service at an illegal gold mine in the heart of the Amazon, between the states of Pará and Amapá. Halfway through the flight, the engine of his small plane stopped. He managed to control the direction of the device for a few minutes and eventually crashed into a remote stream.
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He got out of the plane unharmed and hurried to save the food he was carrying: three bottles of water, twelve loaves of bread, four soda cans, a rope, and a cloth bag. Shortly afterwards, the plane exploded.
“I spent the first night trying to assimilate everything that was going to happen. Many years ago I had taken a survival training in the jungle when I was working for another air taxi company, ”said the Brazilian pilot in a telematic interview with Efe.
As the manual dictates, he spent the first seven days at the scene of the accident to wait for rescue teams. Several planes flew over the area, but with each passing day the noise was less intense and their hope of getting out alive.
On the fifth waiting day, he decided to make a farewell video for his family.
That night I decided to talk to God. I said, ‘If you want me to find my family, give me strength because I just tried and I couldn’t. Looks like it worked, ”he recalls.
The Amazon is the largest jungle in the world, with almost 7 thousand square kilometers. Illustrative and non-commercial image / Pixabay.
The next morning, he began devising a plan to get out of the clutches of the Amazon rainforest, which he describes as “a tremendous pulsating living organism.” A forest with many forests inside.
“On the eighth day I got all my stuff and started walking east. “I’m not going to die here,” I said to myself. “I’m not going to die,” he recalls.
It was then that he entered the lush jungle with the help of an improvised machete he made with a piece of wood, a razor and a knife.
In the woods, the routine was the same for long days: I woke up in the light of dawn and walked toward the sun for hours until just after noon, when I stopped to find a place to camp, always away from the rivers.
This is because water, he says, attracts the Amazon’s great predators: the jaguar, the alligator and the venomous anaconda.
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“Everyone says it is a region full of jaguars. I never found one. I think blending God and knowing how to get away from them helped me, ”he says.
Despite her mood, fear surfaced at night as the sound of nature broke the silence.
“The first days, especially at night, I was very scared. It’s when the jungle manifests. There are many unfamiliar sounds and since you don’t recognize them, they seem to trigger your most intimate fears, ”he confesses. “Over time I started to recognize some sounds. It’s impressive how the jungle deceives you. He cheated on me a lot ”.
The search for food
During the 36 days he spent lost in the jungle, hunger was “common,” he recalls. When the little food he had with him ran out, he turned to nature. But how to recognize whether the fruits were poisonous or not?
“I couldn’t find the fruit you find on the market: banana, mango, pineapple. There is none of that in the middle of the jungle. I began to observe small white fruits and did not know what it was. I saw them fall from the trees because the macaques were moving them. I saw them eat. When the monkeys eat, it’s okay, ”he says.
He later discovered that it was breu, a fruit widely used by the cosmetic industry. He found cocoa four times and three nambu eggs, a bird typical of the Amazon.
The lack of food weakened him enormously. In 36 days he lost 25 pounds.
Observing the monkeys’ eating habits helped him survive in the jungle, says Antonio Sena. Illustrative and non-commercial image / Pixabay.
The sound of the saw
Sena had been wandering the jungle for over 30 days when he heard the sound of a chainsaw from afar. His strength had reached the limit. He had cramps and vision loss, but decided to make his last attempt.
He entered a swamp and crossed a river. He walked through the forest drenched, chasing the distant noise. It was then that he found a white canvas and, miles later, a man.
He looked at me very frightened. He was standing there with the chestnuts in his hand, ”he recalls.
A few minutes later, another man arrived and together they walked to the foot of the chestnut pickers. Once there, the rescue teams and his family were informed by radio. It was the end of his odyssey.
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“My brothers never gave up, they always believed I was alive. I felt his power. They didn’t give up, ”she says through tears.
Sena, who recently flew over the crash site, will now tell his story in a book entitled “36 Days: The Saga of the Airplane Pilot Who Fell in the Amazon and Reunited with God,” by publishing house Buzz.
‘I have been transformed in that jungle. My brothers had also been transformed. Thank goodness that story changes a lot of people too. It’s all we want. Exactly that ”, he says.