Pod Insights Real Survival Stories Kidnapped in Colombia: Into the Jungle (Part 2 of 2) About this episode We return to Matt Scott and his terrifying escapade in South America. The young British backpacker was recently kidnapped by armed men. But he’s just made a break for it - over a precipitous ridge deep in the rainforest. Will he make it down in one piece? Will the soldiers lay chase? How can he hope to make it out of the jungle alive?
A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins.
Written by Joe Viner | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Matt Peaty | Assembly edit by Rob Plummer | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:32 John Hopkins? It's 4 p.m. on September 12, 2003. Somewhere deep in the mountains of northern Colombia, a group of people follow the ridge above a deep jungle-filled gorge.
0:44 John Hopkins? There must be around twenty of them, marching single file, heads lowered against the rain, trooping along in a neat, orderly procession.
0:54 John Hopkins? The group is a strange mix. Some are tourists, bewildered, nervy, unfamiliar with this terrain. Others are dressed in camouflage and wielding assault rifles. It's the men with the guns who hold dominion over the confused, frightened holidaymakers who have little choice but to silently follow orders.
1:18 John Hopkins? That is, until suddenly, one of the tourists breaks rank and darts lightning quick from the line.
1:27 John Hopkins? Matt Scott's plan is simple: get as far away as possible, as quickly as possible.
1:34 Speaker 02 I thought, "Let's go," and just kind of pushed off.
1:38 John Hopkins? With one last glance over his shoulder at the armed guard walking behind him, Matt hurls himself off the ridge in a desperate bid for freedom.
1:48 John Hopkins? The side of the gorge is alarmingly steep, practically sheer, uncovered in a mixture of vegetation and loose, gritty scree. Matt slides, feet first, sending up a fine spray of mud and gravel as he skids on his backside.
2:04 John Hopkins? If there are gunshots behind him, you can't hear them. His ears are filled with the roar of rushing blood and the fizz of adrenaline. The mountains across the valley become a blur as he accelerates, letting gravity take the reins, not daring to slow down until he's outside the range for a bullet. But even if he wanted to slow down, he couldn't.
2:26 John Hopkins? His body violently jolts and judders over the rocks, gracing and scraping, the friction tearing his trousers and cutting into his skin. An attempt to steady himself with his hands shreds the skin from his palms. Having escaped from his kidnappers, Matt is now in serious danger of sliding to his death.
2:46 John Hopkins? He flails, throwing out his hands in the hope of finding something to grab hold of. But the weeds uproot in his fingers, the undergrowth comes away from the ground like torn paper ribbons. And then, with a horrible, gut-wrenching lurch, the gradient drops away beneath him.
3:08 John Hopkins? The slope has steepened into a vertical cliff, and suddenly Matt isn't sliding at all. He's falling.
3:15 Speaker 02 As I'm sliding down one of these sections, I sort of came off the side of the mountain and took quite a big fall, like treads your thirty feet down.
3:25 John Hopkins? By daring to escape, he took a risk. And as he plummets through the air, it seems that his gamble has spectacularly backfired.
3:43 John Hopkins? Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives.
4:04 John Hopkins? In this episode, we return to 19-year-old Matt Scott. In September 2003, the gap-year student is on a trek to the Lost City, an archaeological site in Colombia's Sierra Nevada mountains.
4:17 John Hopkins? With just a week before his flight home, Matt is hoping to make the most of his remaining time in South America. But he ends up getting more than he bargained for. In the early hours of the fourth day, he and seven other tourists were taken hostage by a gang of armed paramilitaries.
4:33 Speaker 02 We were separated into two groups, people they wanted and people they didn't want. And I was put into the group of people they wanted.
4:41 John Hopkins? Matt and his fellow captives were forced to march through the jungle with no idea where they're going or what their kidnappers intend to do with them once they get there. Rather than sticking around to find out, Matt made a bold choice.
4:54 Speaker 02 I made the decision to escape, partially because even though I had underestimated how serious this kidnapping business was, I seemed to have a much higher estimation of how serious the situation we were in was compared to the other people I was talking to.
5:11 John Hopkins? Unable to persuade any of his fellow hostages to come with him, he's been forced to go it alone.
5:18 John Hopkins? But after risking his life in a daring escape, he will soon discover that he may have just traded his human captors for something just as formidable.
5:27 Speaker 02 From that point on, I thought, well, Elie Aktaes, the dias cast. Now I need to walk down this river system until my luck changes or I die.
5:41 John Hopkins? I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.
6:11 John Hopkins? It's September the 12th, 2003, in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Partway down the side of a steep gorge, Matt Scott is falling through the air, bracing himself for impact.
6:25 John Hopkins? Until...
6:27 John Hopkins? he comes to land awkwardly in a spiny thicket of dense undergrowth.
6:34 John Hopkins? The teenager catches his breath. He's disorientated, flushed with adrenaline.
6:41 John Hopkins? He peers around and tries to get his bearings. He must have lost his glasses in the fall, because the world around him is fuzzy at the edges.
6:49 John Hopkins? He disentangles himself from the branches and twists his neck, squinting back up towards the ridge several hundred feet above.
6:58 Speaker 02 When I came off the side of the mountain and looked up at this fall that I'd taken, I thought, "Well, they're not following me down that." And that was the first time I really felt safe, and I knew it was just me against the jungle.
7:13 John Hopkins? The top of the ridge is out of sight, and so too are the men he's running from.
7:19 John Hopkins? Matt listens out for voices or gunfire, but there's nothing, just his own heavy breathing and the soft pitter-patter of rain against the leaves. He's done it.
7:32 John Hopkins? Matt was in the clutches of the rebel soldiers for about 11 hours, from the time he was woken at gunpoint to the moment he chose to escape. Had he stayed, like the seven other hostages, there's no knowing how long his captivity might have lasted. Whatever happens next, at least it will be on his terms.
7:52 John Hopkins? Matt turns and looks down towards the bottom of the slope. It's still a long way down, with multiple rocky outcrops and trees blocking his view. Somewhere down there lies the stream that he intends to follow to the main river in this region, the Rio Buritaca. Find that, and he will be on the home straight back to civilization.
8:15 John Hopkins? He extracts himself from the bush and drops down onto a small ledge.
8:22 John Hopkins? From here, he begins to down-climb, a more controlled descent than his initial dash for freedom, but no less dangerous. Fortunately, he's still pumped up on the thrill of escape.
8:36 Speaker 02 There was definitely a real exhilaration for the first hour, and that helps a lot with the adrenaline, because I was doing dangerous climbing as well, so my adrenaline was really pumping. And I just felt like such an action man hero. Check me out, I'm escaping from kidnapping by gorillas in the Colombian jungle.
8:55 John Hopkins? The cinematic descent into the gorge continues. He leaps from outcrop to outcrop, using tree trunks and hanging vines for support. He's still riding an adrenaline high, which is suppressing both fear and pain, anything that might slow him down.
9:12 Speaker 02 Your body and your mind do actually very good at making you feel the way that it is best to feel to maximize your chances of survival. So even in a situation that on pace of it, that's quite bad, because feeling bad and kind of depressed or scared about my situation would not have helped my survival chances, your evolved response is not to feel that way at all. Your evolved response is to feel really like ginned up and going for it. So yeah, I definitely felt quite good in the first couple of hours after escaping.
9:54 John Hopkins? Eventually, he reaches a ledge where he stops to rest.
9:59 John Hopkins? He is descended below the tree line. The rain has stopped and the sun is out, leaving the jungle more dazzlingly verdant than ever. It bursts with color, an emerald-green explosion of life, palm trees, giant ferns, and flowering plants with huge, waxy leaves.
10:18 John Hopkins? Nat sits on the ground and starts taking stock.
10:23 Speaker 02 I pull off my backpack and see what's on my backpack I have to survive the jungle. Did a little inventory. It's mission focus time. I have two juggling balls. I throw those away. I have two socks filled with gravel and sewn together to make two more makeshift juggling balls. I have one water bottle, potentially very helpful. I have a small amount of a sugar solid called canella, which is this solid sugar product, which the kidnappers gave us, the stuff which we were walking just for the calories.
10:58 John Hopkins? Matt arranges his supplies on the ground in front of him. As well as the water bottle and the sugar solid, he also has a torch, a few pairs of socks, a waterproof plastic sheet, and that's it.
11:12 John Hopkins? He frowns. He rummages in the bottom of his backpack, searching for the one item that he was really counting on, his cigarette lighter.
11:22 John Hopkins? But it's not here.
11:25 John Hopkins? A queasy feeling rises in his stomach.
11:29 John Hopkins? Yesterday evening at the campsite, he and some other tourists had been playing cards when someone took out a lighter to light a candle. It was the same brand of lighter that Matt owned. At the time, he had chalked it down to coincidence. But now, it's pretty obvious what must have happened. He'd left it lying on the table, and someone else must have picked it up.
11:50 Speaker 02 It's such a small thing, because it was just a free gift at a shop. But not having a cigarette lighter was going to be very bad for my chances of survival in the next week. And had I known that I didn't have a cigarette lighter, it might have been a factor in the decision to escape.
12:07 John Hopkins? It gets cold up here in the mountains, and without a lighter, Matt will struggle to start fires for warmth at night.
12:14 John Hopkins? It's a blow. But he can't turn back the clock. His decision's been made. He'll just have to make do without.
12:23 John Hopkins? The priority is being able to travel light and fast. With that in mind, the more weight he can shed, the better. Anything cumbersome or non-essential must be left behind. And that includes his backpack itself.
12:37 Speaker 02 This backpack that I've been wearing is a bit ripped and it slightly impedes my arms, which I need to climb. And because the bag is impeding my movements, I really needed to dump it.
12:50 John Hopkins? Matt's plan is to follow the stream at the bottom of this gorge until it flows into the Rio Baritaca, which will lead him back to civilization. Since he doesn't plan on ever being out of reach of running water, he elects to discard the water bottle along with his backpack. The torch he discovers is broken, so that gets chucked too. Though he does unscrew the top first, keeping it as a cup for drinking water.
13:16 John Hopkins? He stuffs the rolled-up plastic sheet down the side of one of his Wellington boots and then, with his meagre survival kit in tow, he continues descending into the gorge.
13:28 John Hopkins? Soon, bone-weary from over 12 hours of high exertion and little sleep, he stops for the night. He finds a flat ledge and clears away some of the undergrowth to form a small sleeping area. He wraps himself in the plastic sheet and hunkers down as the light fades and the temperatures plummet.
13:49 Speaker 02 And that first night knocked all of the bravado out of me. And after that, I never again felt like, "Oh, I'm an actual man, I can skate." No, after that, I was just a rule of life. Just sort of grim struggle for survival from there on.
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14:45 John Hopkins? It's dawn the following morning.
14:49 John Hopkins? Matt sits up, bleary-eyed and shivering. He stretches out his stiff, cold limbs to catch the sunlight filtering through the forest canopy.
14:59 John Hopkins? Last night was utterly miserable.
15:03 John Hopkins? Lying in the fetal position, the plastic sheet was barely big enough to cover his body. He was forced to grip one end between his thighs, then pull the other half over his torso to get as much coverage as possible.
15:16 John Hopkins? Needless to say, it wasn't much of a barrier against the wind and the rain. He barely slept a wink.
15:23 John Hopkins? But, look on the bright side: he's still alive, isn't he? He is still the master of his own fate, whatever that might be.
15:32 John Hopkins? Matt gathers his few possessions and continues his descent down the steep terrain.
15:39 John Hopkins? After a couple of hours, he encounters a series of waterfalls cascading down the side of the gorge.
15:45 Speaker 02 I remember this one waterfall. I had to like jump from side to side going down. And I was holding on to these little vines that sort of grow out of the hillside. And I was rocking, looking at the place I had to jump. And I was trying to jump on three. I was going like one, two, and then on two. As I walked over two, I felt the vines like ripping and giving way.
16:08 John Hopkins? Matt drops six feet and lands with a hard thud on a moss-covered rock. He winces in pain. Yesterday's adrenaline has worn off, and that one definitely hurt.
16:22 John Hopkins? But he gets up, dusts himself down, and carries on, taking extra caution to sending the next few waterfalls.
16:30 John Hopkins? All day, he picks his way down the side of the gorge. When the sun drops behind the opposite ridge, he starts looking for a place to camp. He pitches up on another flat ledge and steals himself for another chilly night.
16:49 John Hopkins? The next day, the gradient eases. The valley levels out into a dense sprawl of jungle, wedged between two hills and crowding around a shallow, meandering stream.
17:01 John Hopkins? He has finally reached the bottom. He drinks gratefully from the stream and sets off down the valley.
17:10 John Hopkins? But it soon becomes clear that his climb down might have been the easier part.
17:14 Speaker 02 I had to walk inside the stream itself in order to make any progress because the jungle is so thick. And so I'm walking through this, in the stream, in my Wellington boots, like pushing through the wet undergrowth and like over and under branches and trees growing across the stream continuously.
17:34 John Hopkins? The air around him swims with humidity, a constant ploying moisture that coats his skin and catches in his throat. The hours pile up as he beats a path through thick undergrowth, swatting at the clouds of biting insects that swarm above his head. And in this way, day three slips indistinguishably into day four.
17:58 John Hopkins? All this time, Matt's assumption has been that this stream is a tributary of the Rio Baritaca. Hopefully, he will soon reach the larger river, which he can then simply follow out of the mountains back to civilization.
18:12 John Hopkins? But as day four grinds on, foundations of his grand escape plan start to look increasingly shaky. He should have reached the main river by now. Something is wrong.
18:25 Speaker 02 I've become increasingly concerned from day four onwards, correctly as it turns out, that I'm in a different river system and I'm never going to find the Rio Baritaca. And if I keep walking into the jungle without seeing any signs of humans, I am not going to survive that. Like, I don't know how long I can survive without any food in a hostile environment with no support system. But the outlook is not looking great.
19:05 John Hopkins? It's September the 16th, 2003. For the past forty-eight hours, Matt Scott has followed the shallow stream as it meanders through a steep-sided gorge. Having access to drinking water is advantageous, but it comes at a cost.
19:24 Speaker 02 Because I'm walking in the river in permanent shades, my feet are always wet and the water is cold and running fast. And actually, all my body is damp all wet because I'm continuously pushing through undergrowth. So, everything is damp and cold.
19:42 John Hopkins? In just a t-shirt and hiking trousers, he's feeling the chill. His exposed arms are scratched and bitten. His Wellington boots constantly fill with water, forcing him to periodically take them off and empty them out.
19:58 John Hopkins? As day five dawns, concluding yet another bitterly cold night, Matt looks up longingly at the sunlit ridge running parallel to the stream.
20:09 Speaker 02 I need to be up on the ridges so I can get back into sunlight, which would help keep me warm. I won't have trouble with water, but I could make much faster progress.
20:20 John Hopkins? Matt climbs out of the stream, then begins thrashing his way through the waist-high vegetation that lines the bank. The terrain steepens, and he's forced to climb, using branches and vines to haul himself up.
20:34 John Hopkins? After an hour or so, drenched in sweat and panting like a dog, he turns to see how far he's come. Not very. He soldiers on, his thirst intensifying as the heat picks up.
20:49 John Hopkins? Eventually, after five soul-crushing hours, he reaches a near-vertical slope of loose scree, similar to the one he slid down to escape the kidnappers.
20:59 John Hopkins? He starts up it, but immediately triggers a small rockslide of grit and shale.
21:06 John Hopkins? He backs away defeated.
21:09 Speaker 02 I realised two things. Firstly, I was never going to be able to get out of this mountain because the top that I had come down at the start was so steep and it was so loose that it was impossible to climb up. And also, I just couldn't survive that far away from water for any length of time.
21:27 John Hopkins? His throat already burns with thirst. Even if he did manage to reach the ridge, he'd soon be forced back down in search of water. He might as well cut his losses.
21:39 John Hopkins? He turns around and retraces his steps down into the valley, arriving back where he started in a fraction of the time it took him to climb up. He drinks from the stream, then squats in the shallows and splashes his face, rubbing the cool water into the back of his sunburnt neck.
21:56 Speaker 02 From that point on, I thought, well, the die is cast. Now I need to walk down this river system until my luck changes or I die. I don't have any options. The decision has been made.
22:14 John Hopkins? In the hours after his escape, Matt was fuelled by adrenaline. Now it's a different story. As he resumes his miserable slog along the streambed, it's not even clear what he's looking for. Civilization lies in the opposite direction. It's hard not to feel like a dead man walking.
22:36 Speaker 02 I was thinking increasingly that odds on, I was not going to make it out of this experience. This was going to be it. And I kind of made my peace with that. I didn't feel... like it didn't feel so bad. It's strange. You would think that would feel really bad, but actually, I just thought, this is what it is. Like, you make a decision, that's how it goes. It feels like the universe, you could say perhaps, has given us quite a generous allotment of time on this planet. And, you know, eighteen years of good times could be worse. A lot of people, a lot of people didn't even get that. And I sort of
23:18 Speaker 02 felt like if I did die there, actually, I had a pretty good innings. Even at eighteen, I had quite a fun life and that's how that was.
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24:08 John Hopkins? It's two days later. Matt trudges lethargically through the jungle, his shoulders slumped, his eyes downcast.
24:18 John Hopkins? He doesn't even bother to swat away the horseflies anymore. When one lands on his skin, he either ignores it, or, if he can muster the energy, he tries to catch and eat it.
24:30 John Hopkins? Aside from the occasional insect, he hasn't had a bite of food all week. Not since he finished the penela, the solidified sugar product that the kidnappers handed out. Oddly though, he isn't tormented by hunger. A small mercy.
24:48 Speaker 02 I think your body is quite good in a survival situation at giving you the sensations that you need to survive. So actually, I would say that while I didn't have any food, and I did notice physically the effects on myself, and I noticed that I was getting weaker, I had to mentally make that connection between, oh, I'm getting weaker, it's because I haven't eaten in the last week.
25:14 John Hopkins? Like a car running out of fuel, his body is slowing down. His strides have become shuffling steps. Gradually, the slow rasp of his own breathing replaces the symphony of the jungle.
25:30 John Hopkins? And as he gets weaker, the jungle, it seems, is getting stronger.
25:36 John Hopkins? The weeds and bushes that block his path appear more formidable. Thorny barriers that knock him back and catch on his clothes.
25:48 John Hopkins? But then, in the afternoon of day six, Matt sees it.
25:55 John Hopkins? Up ahead, two small openings have been cut in the undergrowth along the riverbank. Beyond them, a muddy track snakes off into the trees. It's a footpath, cutting right across the stream.
26:11 Speaker 02 And this is the first human signs of anything that I've seen in like the last week. And I was ecstatic. And when I found that path, I was like mentally, my chances of survival went from like ten, fifteen percent, way up to ninety percent. So I was really thankful. I I got down on my knees and gave thanks to God. Now, I find this intensely embarrassing because I'm not a religious man. I knew even at the time that was a bit ridiculous, but I don't know, the solace you does funny things to you.
26:48 John Hopkins? Matt gets back to his feet.
26:51 John Hopkins? With a new spring in his step, he pulls his boots out of the boggy streambed and hops up onto the footpath. It cuts across the valley, running east to west. Surely by following this path, he will eventually reach some kind of human settlement. But as he sets off walking, another possibility presents itself.
27:13 Speaker 02 I was ninety percent sure that I was on the paths used by the same rebel group that captured me. So if I was going to run into anyone, I would sort of thought I was going to run into the rebels again.
27:26 John Hopkins? Later that day, his suspicions are confirmed.
27:31 Speaker 02 I can see where the rebels made camp every night because this just parts next to the path that are cut flat where you can see tents have been pitched like the grass is discolored in that way that you get.
27:43 John Hopkins? The camps appear periodically along the trail, the distance between them indicating how far the rebels and their captives have walked every day.
27:53 John Hopkins? Matt forces himself to march the same distance, not stopping until he comes across another patch of flattened grass with the remnants of a campfire beside it.
28:03 John Hopkins? He inspects these little heaps of damp gray ash for embers, something he could use to start a fire of his own, but no luck.
28:13 John Hopkins? He walks on. The trail climbs the side of the valley before tracing the spine of a ridge. He is able to make much better progress up here than down in the stream. But of course, the big drawback is the absence of drinking water. His entire daily supply comes from whatever rain happens to collect in his plastic sheet overnight. His thirst is a constant round-the-clock torture.
28:40 John Hopkins? And now up here, there is also the constant round-the-clock threat of running into his captors again.
28:49 John Hopkins? Day seven becomes day eight.
28:54 John Hopkins? On the morning of day nine, Matt staggers to his feet, his body aching and burning from the countless blisters and sores he's accumulated, and hobbles off in the footsteps of his kidnappers.
29:08 Speaker 02 I would have been pleased to see them at this point because this escaping business had not gone well for me. Like, at that point, I would have said, "Oh, survival."
29:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, it would have been awkward. It would have been awkward. I'm not gonna lie. Hi, guys. Funny story. But what, you know, what can you do? So I thought I might run into them again.
29:30 John Hopkins? On and on he goes, following the gentle curvature of the ridge. Eventually, his profound dehydration forces him to resort to desperate measures.
29:41 Speaker 02 I did drink my own urine. Ugh! Ah, it does not taste nice. It really doesn't. And it was so unpleasant that I redoubled my effort to get water by other means because it was so nasty. There's a plant that grows there, on kind of rotting wood, that sort of stores water in its base. And I found that you can grab the base of the plant, rip the whole thing off the rotting wood, then find the longest leaf, like, angle that into your mouth and drink the water that's in the middle.
30:15 John Hopkins? It dawns on him.
30:18 John Hopkins? The jungle isn't just an antagonistic force working against him. It might also contain tools to help him survive.
30:27 John Hopkins? It's a simple but significant mindset shift.
30:32 John Hopkins? And as time passes, Matt discovers other new and innovative ways to use the few tools he has at his disposal.
30:40 John Hopkins? Noticing one day that his sock is saturated with rainwater, he touches the sodden fabric to his lips. In doing so, he manages to partially alleviate his thirst, without actually drinking a drop. It's another lightbulb moment.
30:58 Speaker 02 If you are really, really thirsty, water goes a lot further if you suck it out of a sponge rather than just drinking it. Because you get the sensation of sort of having drunk more and just wetting your lips makes a huge difference. So I would use the sock like a sponge and I would suck like the rainwater and sweat from my feet out of this sock until it got dry and then I would exchange it with one of the socks I was wearing and just repeat the process.
31:29 Speaker 02 The longer I walked, the more I would regress back to simplifies, back to kind of childhood, to the point where I was just singing these nursery rhymes, the same few verses that I could remember, for hours and hours and hours and hours as I walked, like originally out loud and then aggressively sort of flying under my breath, almost meditatively. I think, I don't know, these things just kind of help you keep going somehow.
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32:34 John Hopkins? It's day 10.
32:37 John Hopkins? Matt drags his feet up the last few meters of a steep incline.
32:43 John Hopkins? When he reaches the crest, he lifts his head. It immediately stops in his tracks. There's another valley spread out below. But this one looks different from the countless others he's already walked through. Rather than another sprawling depression filled with dense jungle, this valley bears the signs of human agriculture. The trees have been cut down to allow grass to grow.
33:09 Speaker 02 So, I'm going over this one valley and I think that looks like signs of cultivation. So I made the decision to descend into that valley. It's quite a big decision because I wasn't sure that I would be able to get back out of that valley if it turned out not to be a good idea.
33:23 John Hopkins? Matt descends. Sure enough, he soon emerges from the trees into a wide open area of cultivated grassland. There's no question that a human hand is behind it. What's less clear is whether this land is still in use or if the people who once raised crops or livestock here have moved on to pastures new.
33:46 John Hopkins? All afternoon, Matt walks through the fields.
33:50 John Hopkins? The sun dazzles overhead, flooding the valley with sunshine. He scans the horizon, but doesn't see any further signs of human civilization.
34:00 John Hopkins? On either side of the valley floor, steep, jungle-covered hills bracket the sky, which has turned a dusky shade of blue by the time he decides to stop for the night.
34:11 John Hopkins? It's at that moment that he spots the building.
34:15 John Hopkins? It's a few hundred feet up ahead, a simple wooden structure with four posts holding up a ramshackle roof.
34:24 Speaker 02 There's an indigenous hut with no walls but a roof and actually some rotten kind of food in a cloth bag. It's some green potatoes and some animal has been skinned. The skin has been left there. But it's all been left in this bag and it started to turn green, so I don't try and eat it. But this is definitely like we're going up on the levels of human habitation.
34:50 John Hopkins? The next morning, Matt continues through the valley, following the path uphill into the trees.
34:57 John Hopkins? He's been walking for a couple of hours when he hears something behind him: the soft clip-clop of hooves.
35:06 John Hopkins? He spins around. A pair of donkeys plod along the trail behind him, their heads stooped, their long, pointed ears twitching away the flies. The animals come to a halt when Matt stops walking, gazing dolefully at him with their big, black eyes. He stares back, transfixed. Are they following him? He turns and continues on, and immediately the donkeys fall into step behind him. Now this is a promising sign. The presence of domesticated animals suggests that humans must be in the vicinity.
35:43 John Hopkins? And sure enough...
35:45 Speaker 02 Three or four hours later, some people come for the donkeys. And the people who come are a couple, I think, a man and a woman, and one of their children. They are indigenous people from a group called the Kogi. And they don't speak any Spanish, so we can't really communicate with each other.
36:06 John Hopkins? The indigenous people stare blankly as Matt tries to communicate. They seem disinterested, even slightly bored by his desperate mime act. A hint of panic enters his performance. What if he can't get his message across? What if they decide to leave him here?
36:26 Speaker 02 There's a lot of shirats that happens, like while I try and act out being kidnapped by rebels in the jungle with these indigenous people. And I kind of thought at an agonizing moment that they were just going to walk on and leave me there at the top of their land.
36:52 John Hopkins? It's two days later. Matt's frantic attempts to communicate with the indigenous people finally yielded results. At the very least, they decided he wasn't a threat.
37:04 John Hopkins? They beckoned for him to follow them and set off walking.
37:08 John Hopkins? He has been following them now for the past forty-eight hours on a grueling trek back to their village.
37:18 Speaker 02 I thought that the rebels marched us hard. Oh my god, the indigenous people walk so far.
37:26 Speaker 02 And they don't lie about it either. With the guerrillas, when I said, "Oh, you know, where are we going?", they would say, "Oh, we're not a mass, we're not a mass. It's always one hour more. We're just walking one hour more." But I was like to the indigenous people, "Oh, we must be nearly there yet. I please..." But like, "No."
37:44 John Hopkins? Finally, they reach what appears to be the outskirts of a village. A few scattered huts line the trail, with more indigenous people sitting outside on chairs.
37:57 John Hopkins? The villagers are all chewing dried coca leaves and gazing at Matt with the same look of mild indifference.
38:05 John Hopkins? He's told to wait while one of the three people who found him disappears inside one of the huts. They emerge moments later with a woman who greets Matt in Spanish.
38:17 John Hopkins? Finally able to communicate with words, he begins to explain the situation. The woman nods, understanding.
38:27 Speaker 02 She said, "Yeah, we know who they are. We hate them because they steal our cows." And it's such a small detail, but I'm reasonably angry. I mean, the indigenous people really have nothing. They're not living in a market economy. It's hand to mouth, you know? They steal from people who have so little. It seems so petty to... That's what I thought. What I can't get over is how petty. These guerrilla groups in the area, they go for extortion, kidnapping and ransom, and they sell a lot of cocaine. And these are all multi-million pound drugs, and they're still chaos for the indigenous people.
39:04 John Hopkins? Matt is taken inside a hut where he is offered a place to rest, eat and recover. He is given some food, some oranges and some salted bean curd that he devours in seconds flat.
39:17 John Hopkins? Then he gingerly removes his wellies, revealing the battle scars of 12 days lost in the jungle.
39:24 Speaker 02 When I got them out of the boots, they immediately swelled up to be enormous, like I'm not exaggerating, they were enormous. And they turned this bright, angry red and they're covered in sores. And I've got like a good old fashioned case of trench foot for walking in wet boots all that way. That night I get to sleep in a hammock in a room with a fire where it's actually warm. And there's this indigenous guy who sits by the fire. And he's got this big burlap sack, like this big sack of coca leaves. And there are these stones that he puts in the fire. And he sits there doing this for hours, like five hours or something. So it's just this kind of ASMR sound of him shaking these stones in this bag of leaves for hours and hours and hours.
40:07 Speaker 02 And yeah, I get the first actually good night's sleep.
40:19 John Hopkins? The following morning, Matt is led a little bit further down the valley to what he learns is the tribe's main village.
40:26 John Hopkins? When he gets there, he receives a nasty surprise.
40:30 Speaker 02 I get back to their main village and they say there are some people here who are interested in you. And then half an hour later, there's two guys, black military flak jacket, assault rifles.
40:42 John Hopkins? The armed men approach him, their assault rifles at their hips. Has he been tricked? Led straight back into the arms of the kidnappers, should he run? But before he has time to consider his options, his fears are quelled.
40:59 John Hopkins? These men are not the rebel soldiers. They are members of the official Colombian military and have come to help.
41:06 John Hopkins? Just minutes later, an army helicopter arrives on the scene. The forest cannot be churning in the powerful downdraft.
41:15 John Hopkins? Matt is helped onto the backseat. He waves goodbye to his saviors as the chopper lifts and swoops off across the jungle to safety.
41:32 John Hopkins? Matt is flown to Colombia's capital city, Bogota, where he is taken straight to hospital.
41:38 John Hopkins? As he lies in the ward, being checked over by a rotation of different doctors and nurses, he comes to learn that while he was fighting for survival in the jungle, the story of the kidnapping had been making headlines. It even reached the upper echelons of the UK government.
41:55 John Hopkins? Now, as the sole escapee, Matt finds himself at the centre of a media frenzy.
42:02 Speaker 02 I have to be debriefed by the military, I get to call my parents, there's a phone off its mind as he comes to pick me up. There's press, I get interviewed by the press, they tell me the president's coming to see me, then he knows it does actually. And, yeah, it's real sort of chaotic, bedlam stuff, while I'm lying in this bed and all this stuff is happening around me.
42:23 John Hopkins? A few days later, Matt is put on a flight home to England.
42:28 John Hopkins? With his new celebrity status, he gets the royal treatment.
42:32 Speaker 02 The best part of the story is, when I get past the boarding gate and get on, the flight crew says to me, "Oh, we can upgrade you to first class. There's three seats up here, we know what you've been through, we heard the story, we'll just pop you up to first class." I remember saying, "Oh, you mean I can order anything off this menu?" And they're like, "Yeah." I said, "Well, can I have everything off this menu?" And they said, "Yeah." And I said, "Great, just like start the top starter and keep bringing things." And I just tried, I did actually get that part through, because it's still hard to eat. Ah, yeah, that was the real joy. And then having a visit to celebrity for like 15 minutes wasn't bad either.
43:14 John Hopkins? At the airport in London, he is happily reunited with his family. There's a flurry of media attention. Press conferences, interviews, and segments on the news. But the hubbub quickly dies down. People move on, and so does Matt. He starts university, making it in time for freshers week. He can feel pretty confident that no gap-year stories can rival his.
43:46 John Hopkins? But what about the seven other kidnapped tourists? The ones who didn't escape? Their ordeal goes on and on.
43:57 John Hopkins? It turns out they were kidnapped by a group called the ELN, a left-wing paramilitary organization. The reason behind the kidnapping, as will later be reported, was part of a complex negotiation strategy over the release of the ELN's imprisoned leader.
44:14 John Hopkins? The captives are held for over three months before finally being released after a negotiated agreement between the rebels and the Colombian government. No ransom money was ever exchanged.
44:27 John Hopkins? In the years since, Matt has gone on to graduate and become an engineer. He retains an interest in juggling and in international travel, though he is still prone to miss the occasional flight.
44:39 John Hopkins? Looking back on his misadventure in Colombia, Matt admits that he feels incredibly lucky compared to the other hostages, many of whom suffered far more lasting psychological scars than he did.
44:50 John Hopkins? As for his survival, he maintains that his astonishing display of endurance isn't rooted in extraordinary ability, courage, or even luck. It's all about choices, or rather, the lack thereof.
45:04 Speaker 02 If you want to do something extraordinary, it makes it much, much easier if you give yourself literally no other choice. So you might think, "Oh, I can't swim 20 miles back to shore in, you know, 10-degree water." If someone dumps you 20 miles out of shore in 10-degree water, you might surprise yourself. Get up and walk, or, you know, sleep in the warm afternoon sun and just die and give up. It's easier to walk and keep going than you might think. Yeah, I think what else you survive having no other choices? That is that else.
45:50 John Hopkins? In the next episode, we meet Tom Wilson.
45:54 John Hopkins? In November 2008, the 35-year-old is on a routine work trip to visit a construction project at Toban Inlet, a wild, remote fjord on the coast of British Columbia. But when his small, chartered plane meets a violent and horrifying end, Tom will be thrust into hell on earth.
46:13 John Hopkins? After somehow surviving the initial impact, he must find a way to overcome his panic and escape the burning wreckage of the plane. And even then, he'll soon discover his ordeal has only just begun.
46:26 John Hopkins? That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen right now by joining Noiser Plus.
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