A 13-year-old girl used “survival games” to keep her and her siblings – including a baby – alive in the Amazon Rainforest for 40 days, her family have revealed.
Before news of their rescue emerged on Friday – Lesly, 13, Soleiny, nine, Tien Noriel, four, and baby Cristin, one – spent more than a month trapped in dense Colombian jungle after the light aircraft they were travelling in crashed on May 1.
It killed everyone else onboard – including the children’s mother Magdalena Mucutui Valencia.
With no outside help, Lesly and Soleiny resorted to using their knowledge of the jungle to survive, their aunt Damarys Mucutuy said.
Speaking to Caracol news network, she said the teenager and nine-year-old would frequently play a game setting up “little camps” before the disaster.
She translated this after the crash and used hair ribbons to make camps and keep her younger brothers safe in jungle which is home to predators including jaguars, pumas and snakes.
It is also used by armed gangs that smuggle drugs.
In pictures released by the Colombian military after they were rescued, hair ties can be seen among branches on the jungle floor.
The children’s grandfather Fidencio Valencia said they were “very weak” but “happy to see their family”.
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In addition to making a camp, Lesly “knew what fruits she can’t eat because there are many poisonous fruits in the forest. And she knew how to take care of a baby”, her grandmother Fatima Valencia explained.
Mrs Valencia added that Lesly’s experience looking after her siblings while her mother was at work also helped.
It is thought that this knowledge, combined with food they managed to salvage from the plane’s wreckage and other skills learned growing up in the Huitoto indigenous group, helped the children survive for such a long period.
“She gave them flour and cassava bread, any fruit in the bush, they know what they must consume,” she told the BBC.
“They were raised by their grandmother,’ said John Moreno, a leader of the Guanano group in Vaupes, in the southeastern part of Colombia where the children were raised.
“They used what they learned in the community, relied on their ancestral knowledge in order to survive.”
The children have since been taken to a military hospital to recover
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Speaking after they were found, their grandfather Fidencio Valencia said they were “very weak” but “happy to see their family”.
Ms Mucutuy told a local radio station that “the children are fine” despite being found with signs of dehydration and insect bites and have been offered mental health services.
They are currently being cared for at a military hospital in the capital, Bogota.
Friday’s announcement came after weeks of searching for the children by authorities in the South American country.
President Gustavo Petro called them an “example of survival” and predicted their saga “will remain in history”.
The manhunt was sparked after their children’s bodies were not found alongside the plane’s wreckage which was discovered between May 15 and 16.
Around 200 soldiers and indigenous people who knew the area were later dispatched to comb through some 320 sq km (124 sq mi) of jungle.
It is thought that at points they came with 100m (300ft) of them, but storms, thick vegetation and marshy terrain prevented them making contact.
The air force also dropped food parcels and 10,000 flyers telling them to stay put and giving them survival tips.
After being found, army radios could be heard saying: “Miracle, miracle, miracle, miracle.”
Defense Minister Ivan Velasquez has since paid tribute to the various army units’ “unshakeable and tireless” work, as well as to the Indigenous people who took part in the search.