The story of four children discovered deep in the Amazon jungle, grieving, hungry and insect-bitten but otherwise uninjured despite being lost for 40 days after a plane crash, feels closer to myth or fairytale than real life. That a dog apparently accompanied them for some of this time, before itself going missing, is yet another fantastical element in a drama that has gripped Colombia and much of the world.
Feats of endurance involving children always command attention. What makes this one so astonishing is that sisters aged 13 and nine not only kept themselves going on a mixture of cassava flour salvaged from the wreck, and foraged fruits and seeds, but also helped their four-year-old brother and baby sister – who had her first birthday in the forest – to stay alive. The children, said Colombia’s leftwing president, Gustavo Petro, are “an example of total survival”.
