Kidnapped in Colombia: Into the Jungle (Part 2 of 2)

Now you can watch ESPN College Game Day and select live college football games on Disney+ All day every Saturday at Nox for Cost for Disney+ Subscribers Now there's something for every kind of thing Select live college football games are now on Disney+ It's going to be wild! A limited sampling of content from ESPN is now available to all Disney+ subscribers Upgrade to a plan that includes ESPN to access the full ESPN on Disney+ experience Tami regularly haul stuff to her kids at college That's why she shops at BJ's wholesale club saving up to 25% off grocery store prices Beef jerky, microwave meals, laundry pods even they can't screw up Have you met my kid? And with BJ's gas she gets there for less They call me the road warrior This is your home road warrior mom, home of the save Join for just $20 at bj's.com/maskete and save 10 cents per gallon for six months Open soon limited time offer new members only BJ's home of the save It's 4 p.m. on September the 12th 2003 Somewhere deep in the mountains of Northern Columbia A group of people follow the ridge above a deep jungle-filled gorge There must be around 20 of them Marching single file heads lowered against the rain Trooping along in a neat, orderly procession The group is a strange mix Some are tourists who wielded nervy unfamiliar with this terrain Others are dressed in camouflage and wielding assault rifles It's the members of the guns who hold dominion over the confused frightened holiday makers who have little choice but to silently follow orders That is until suddenly One of the tourists breaks rank and darts lightning quick from the line Matt Scott's plan is simple Get as far away as possible as quickly as possible I thought let's go and just kind of pushed off With one last glance over his shoulder At the armed guard walking behind him Matt purls himself off the ridge in a desperate bid for freedom 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 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 bullet But even if he wanted to slow down he couldn't His body violently jolts and judders over the rocks greatsing 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 no in serious danger of sliding to his death 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 The slope has steepened into a vertical cliff and suddenly Matt isn't sliding at all He's falling As I'm sliding that one of these sections I sort of came off the side of the mask And took quite a big fall like shreds your 30 feet down By daring to escape it took a risk And as he plummets through the air it seems that his gamble was spectacularly backfired 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 extra ordinary situations People suddenly forced to fight for their lives In this episode we returned 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 With just a week before his flight home Matt is hoping to make the most of his remaining time inside the 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 paramilatures 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 Matt and his fellow captives were forced to march through the jungle with no idea where they're going Or what they kidnap as intent to do with them once they get there Rather than sticking around to find out Matt made a bold choice I made this 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 Unable to persuade any of his fellow hostages to come with him. He's been forced to go it alone But after risking his life in a daring escape People soon discover that he may have just traded his human captors for something just as formidable From that point on, I thought, "Well, L.A. Act asked the dire's cast Now I need to walk down this river system until my love changes or I die." I'm John Hopkins. From the Noise of Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories [Music] 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 Racing himself for impact Until he comes to land awkwardly in a spiny thicket of dense undergrowth The teenager catches his breath He's disorientated flushed with adrenaline 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 He disentangles himself from the branches and twists his neck Squinting back up towards the ridge, several hundred feet above Well, I came off the side of the mountain and looked up at this fall that I've taken I thought, "Well, they're not following me down that. That was the first time I really liked felt safe And I knew it was just new again to the jungle." The top of the ridge is out of sight and so too are the men he's running from 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 Matt was in the clutches of the rebel soldiers for about 11 hours From the time he was working at gunpoint to the moment he chose to escape That 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 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 but he intends to follow to the main river in this region the Rio Buritaka Find that and he will be on the home straight back to civilization He extracts himself from the bush and drops down onto a small ledge 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 There was definitely an 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 here And I checked me out and escaping from the chin downing by gorillas and the Columbia jungle 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 on adrenaline high which is suppressing both fear and pain Anything that might slow him down Your body and your mind are actually very good at Making you feel the way that it is the feel to maximize your childhood of survival So even in a situation that on pace and end, that's quite bad and Because feeling that I'm kind of depressed or scared about my situation would not have helped my survival chapters. Your involved response is not to feel that way at all. Your involved response is to feel really like, "He pinned up and going for the rest." So yeah, I definitely felt quite good in the first couple of hours after escaping. Eventually, he reaches a ledge where he stops to rest. 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 colour, an emerald green explosion of life, palm trees, giant ferns, and flowering plants with huge, waxy leaves. And that sits on the ground and starts taking stock. I pull off my backpack and see what on my backpack I have to survive the jungle. In a little inventory. It's mission-focused time. I have two juggling balls. I throw those away. I have two socks filled with gravel and sewn together. Make two more, make two juggling balls. I have one water bottle. Tentally very helpful. I have a small amount of a sugar solid called Canella, which is this solid sugar product. Very cheap. The kid that was gave up this challenge. We were walking just for the calories. 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. He frowns. He rummages in the bottom of his backpack, searching for the one item that he was really counting on. His cigarette lighter. But it's not here. A queasy feeling rises in his stomach. Yesterday evening at the campsite, he and some other tourists have been playing cards when someone took out a lighter to light a candle. It was the same brand of lighter that mattered. 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. It's such a small thing because it was just a free gift that was shot. But not having a cigarette lighter was going to be very bad for my childhood survival in the next week. And how they known that I didn't have a cigarette lighter, it might have been a factor in the decision to escape. It gets cold up here in the mountains. And without a lighter, Matt will struggle to start fires for warmth at night. It's a blow. But he can't turn back the clock. His decision has been made. He'll just have to make do without. The priority is being able to travel lights 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. This backpack that I've been wearing is a bit ripped, and it slightly impede my arms, which I need to climb. And because the bag is impeding my movements, I really need to dump it. Matt's plan is to follow the stream at the bottom of the scourge until it flows into the Rio Borataca, 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. He stuffs the rolled up plastic sheet down the side of one of his Wellington boots, and then, with his meager survival kit in tow, he continues descending into the gorge. 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. And that first night knocked all of the bravado out of me, and after that, I never again felt like, "Oh, an axe man, like it's dead night." No, after that, I was just so rolling like just sort of grim struggle first survival from there on. Now you can watch ESPN College Game Day and select live college football games on Disney Flash. All day every Saturday at Nox for cost for Disney+ subscribers. Now there's something for every kind of thing. Select live college football games are now on Disney+. A limited sampling of content from ESPN is now available to all Disney+ subscribers. Upgrade to a plan that includes ESPN to access the full ESPN on Disney+ experience. Terms apply. Hank joined BJ's wholesale club the day he became a father of 30. I coach football. Now coach Hank saves up to 25% off grocery store prices, 30 pounds of pasta, 3 cases of protein bars, 75 sports drinks, and that's just pregame. He knows teamwork, and BJ's knows savings. This is your home coach, home of the save. Join for just $20 at BJ's.com/maskete and save 10 cents per gallon for 6 months. Open soon limited time offer new members only. BJ's home of the save. It's dawn the following morning. Matt sits up, bleary eyed and shivering. He stretches out his stiff cold limbs to catch the sunlight filtering through the forest canopy. Last night was utterly miserable. 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. Needless to say, it wasn't much of a barrier against the wind and the rain. He barely slept a wink. 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. Matt gathers his few possessions and continues his descent down the steep terrain. After a couple of hours he encounters a series of waterfalls, cascading down the side of the gorge. I remember this wonderful waterfall, I had to jump from side to side, going down. And I was holding on to these little vines that were growing out of the hillside, and I was rocking looking at the place I had to jump. And I was finally jump on three, I was going like one, two, and then on two. As I walked over two, I felt the vibes like whipping and giving way. 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. But he gets up, dusts himself down and carries on, taking extra caution descending the next few waterfalls. 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. 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. He is finally reached the bottom. He drinks gratefully from the stream and sets off down the valley. But it soon becomes clear that his climb down might have been the easier part. I have 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. I'm pushing through the wet undergrowth and like over and under branches and trees growing across the stream continuously. The air around him swims with humidity, a constant, clawing moisture that coats his skin and catches him 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. All this time Matt's assumption has been that this stream is a tributary of the Rio Baritaka. Hopefully he will soon reach the larger river, which he can then simply follow out of the mountains back to civilization. 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. I've become increasingly concerned from day four on its correct years, it turns out, that I'm in a different river system and I'm never going to find the Rio Baritaka. 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 sort of hostile environment with no support system. But the outlook is not looking great. It's September the 16th, 2003. For the past 48 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. Because I'm walking in the river in permanent shade, my feet are always wet and the water's colds are running fast and actually all my body is down hallways because I'm continuously that pushing through undergrowth. So everything is down from colds. 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. As day five dawns, concluding yet another bitterly cold night, Matt looks up longingly at the sunlit ridge running parallel to the stream. I need to be up on the ridges so I can get back into sunlight, which would help give me warm. I've worked out trouble with water, but I could make much faster progress. Matt climbs out of the stream, then begins thrashing his way through the waist-high vegetation that lines the bank. The terrain's steepens and he's forced to climb, using branches and vines to haul himself up. 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. Eventually, after five soul-crushing hours, he reaches a near vertical slope of loose scree, similar to the one who slid down to escape the kidnappers. He starts up it, but immediately triggers a small rock slide of grit and shale. He backs away defeated. I realised two things. Firstly, I was never going to be able to get out of this van 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 longer time. 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. 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 squots in the shallows and splashes his face, rubbing the cool water into the back of his sun-burnt neck. From that point on, I thought, well, the day has come, now I need to walk down this river system until my lung changes or I die. I don't have any options that the season has been made. In the hours after his escape, Matt was fueled 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. Civilisation lies in the opposite direction. It's hard not to feel like a dead man walking. 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, Mr. Tizbo of this, 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, 18 years of good times, could be worse. A lot of people, a lot of people, they didn't even get that. And I sort of felt like, if I did die there, I actually had a pretty good ending. It's even, I think, had quite a, a fun life, and that's how that was. Starting or growing your own business can be intimidating and lonely at times. Your to-do list may feel endless with new tasks, and lists can easily begin to overrun your life. So finding the right tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything as a built-in business partner can be a game changer. For millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify. 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Now you can watch ESPN College Game Day and select live college football games on Disney Plus. All day every Saturday at Nox for cost for Disney Plus subscribers. Select live college football games are now on Disney Plus. A limited sampling of content from ESPN is now available to all Disney Plus subscribers. Upgrade to a plan that includes ESPN and to access the full ESPN on Disney Plus experience in terms of buying. When one lands on his skin, he either ignores it, or if he can muster the energy, he tries to catch and eat it. Aside from the occasional insect, he hasn't had a bite of food all week. Not since he finished the panella, he solidified sugar product that the kid meppers handed out. Oddly though, he isn't tormented by hunger, a small mercy. 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 foods, 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 guessing weaker, it's because I haven't eased it in the last week." Like a car running out of fuel, his body is slowing down. His strides have become shuffling steps. Gradually, the slow rust of his own breathing replaces the symphony of the jungle. And as he gets weaker, the jungle it seems is getting stronger. The weeds and bushes that block his path appear more formidable, thorny barriers that knock him back and catch on his clothes. But then, in the afternoon of day 6, Matt sees it. Up ahead, two small openings have been cut in the undergrowth along the riverbank. Beyond them, a muddy track sneaks off into the trees. It's a footpath, cutting right across the stream. And this is the first human science of anything that I've seen in the last week, and I was ecstatic. And when I found that path, I was mentally, my chances of survival went from 10-15% way up to 90%. So I was really thankful. I got down on my knees and gave thanks to God. Now, I find this intensely embarrassing because I'm not a religious man, and I knew even at the time that I was being a bit ridiculous, but I don't know, the solitude does funny things to you. Matt gets back to his feet. With a new spring in his step, he pulls his boots out of the boggy stream bed and hops up under 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. As he sets off walking, another possibility presents itself. I was 90% sure that I was on the path used by the saved 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. Later that day, his suspicions are confirmed. I can see. you where the rebels make camp every night because there's just parts next to the path that are cut flat where you can see tension being pitched like the grass is discolored in that way you get. The camps appear periodically along the trail. The distance between them indicating how far the rebels and their captives have walked every day. 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. He inspects these little heaps of damp gray ash for embers something he could use to start a fire of his own with no luck. 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 on 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. And now up here there is also the constant round the clock threat of running into his captors again. Day seven becomes day eight. 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. I would have been pleased to see the witness because this is gave him business of not going well for me. Like at that point I was just asked survival. It would have been all quit. It would have been my life. Oh my gosh funny story. But what you know what can you do. So I thought I might run into them again. And on he goes following the gentle curvature of the ridge. Eventually his profound dehydration forces him to resort to desperate measures. I did drink my own urine. It does not taste nice. It really doesn't. And it was so unpleasant that I redouble my effort to get water by other means because it was so nasty. There's a plant that grows there that I'm kind of rotting wood that sort of stores water in its base. And I found that you can grab the base of the plant and 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. It dawns on him. The jungle isn't just an antagonistic force working against him. It might also contain tools to help him survive. It's a simple but significant mindset shift. And as time passes Matt discovers other new and innovative ways to use the few tools he has at his disposal. 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 light bulb moment. 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 this 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. The longer I walked the more I would regret about a stimulus, about kind of childhood, to the point where I was just singing these nursery wine 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 lightly onto my breath almost meditatively. I think these things are going to help you keep going. So now you can watch ESPN College Game Day and select live college football games on Disney Plus. It's going to be why. Upgrade to a plan that includes ESPN and to access the full ESPN on Disney Plus experience. Terms apply. Tammy regularly hauled stuff to her kids at college. That's why she shops at BJ's wholesale club saving up to 25% off grocery store prices. Beef jerky, microwave meals, laundry pods even they can't screw up. Have you met my kid? And with BJ's gas she gets there for less. They call me the road warrior. This is your home road warrior mom home of the safe. Join for just $20 at BJ's dot com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months open soon limited time offer new members only BJ's home of the safe. It's day 10. Matt drags his feet up the last few meters of a steep incline. When he reaches the crest he lifts his head 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 there's the signs of human agriculture. The trees have been cut down to allow grass to grow. So I'm going over this one valley I think that looks like sign to conservation. So I made the decision to descend into that valley. It's quite a big decision because I wasn't sure I would be able to get back out of that valley if it turned out not to be a good idea. 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. All afternoon Matt walks through the fields. The sun dazzles overhead flooding the valley with sunshine. He scans the horizon but doesn't see any further signs of human civilization. On either side of the valley floor steep jungle covered hills bracket the sky which has turned a dusky shade of blue by the tummy decides to stop for the night. It's at that moment that he spots the building. It's a few hundred feet up ahead a simple wooden structure with four posts holding up a ram shackle roof. There's an indigenous hut with no walls but a roof and actually some rotten kind of food in a cloth bag that it's some green potatoes and some animal has been skinned. The skin has been that day but it's all been left in this bag and it started to turn green so I don't try to eat it but this is definitely like we're going up on the levels of human habitation. The next morning Matt continues through the valley following the path uphill into the trees. He's been walking for a couple of hours when he hears something behind him. The soft clipcloth of hooves. 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 that suggest that humans must be in the vicinity and sure enough. 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 Kogi and they don't speak any Spanish so we can't really communicate with each other. The indigenous people stare blankly as Matt tries to communicate. They seem disinterested, even slightly bored by his desperate mind 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? There's a lot of shoe arms that happens like while I try and so Aghtow being kidnapped by rebels in the jungle to unleash indigenous people and I kind of thought that an agonizing moment that they were just going to walk on and unleash me that at the top of their land. 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. They begged him to follow them and set off walking. He has been following them now for the past 48 hours on a grueling trek back to their village. I thought that the rebels marched us hard. Oh my god, the indigenous people walked so far. And they don't lie about either. With the gorillas, when I said, oh, where are we going? But they were saying, oh, we're not a mass, we're not a mass. It's always one hour more. We just walk you one hour more. But I was like, it's the indigenous people. Oh, we must be near Italy. I'm pleased. I'm like, no. 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. The villagers are all chewing dried coca leaves, and gazing at Matt with the same look of mild indifference. 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. Finally, able to communicate with words, it begins to explain the situation. The woman nods, understanding. 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, 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, but it seems to be petty. That's one of-- well, what I can't get over is how petty. These greener groups in the area, that they go to the extortion, kidnapping, and ransom, have a sonata coca. And these are all multi-million cow crops. And they still cow us indigenous people. Matt is taken inside a hut, where he's offered a place to rest, eat, and recover. He's given some food, some oranges, and some salted bean curd that he devours in seconds flat. Then he gingerly removes his wellies, revealing the battle scars of 12 days lost in the jungle. When I got the match of the boots, they immediately swelled up to be enormous. Like I'm not exaggerating, they were enormous. And they turned this bride to the angry red, and they covered in sorts. And I got a good old-fashioned case of trench foot for walking wet boots all that way. That night I get to sleep in a hammock, 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 between shaking these stones in which bag of leaves. For hours, now, as now. And yeah, I get the first actually good night's sleep. The following morning, Matty's led a little bit further down the valley to what he learns is the tribe's main village. When he gets there, he receives a nasty surprise. I get back to the 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, like military flags, you know, assault rifles. The armed men approach him. They're assault rifles of their hips. As he's 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. These men are not the rebel soldiers. They're members of the official Colombian military and they've come to help. Just minutes later, an army helicopter arrives on the scene. The forest cannot be churning in the powerful down draft. Matty is helped onto the backseat. He waves goodbye to his saviors as the chopper lifts and swoops off across the jungle to safety. Matty is flown to Columbia's capital city, Bogota, where he's taken straight to hospital. 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. Now, as the soul escapee, Mat finds himself at the center of a media frenzy. I have to be debriefed by the military. I get to call my parents and throw it off his mind. As you come 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 I actually-- and, yeah, it's real, sort of chaotic, bedroom stuff. While I'm lying in this bed and all this stuff is sort of happening around me. A few days later, Mat is put on a flight home to England with his new celebrity status against the Royal treatment. The best part of the story is, when I get past the boarding you get and get on, the flight cruisers to me, oh, we can upgrade you to first last. There's three seats up here. We know what we've been through. We heard the story. We're just about to go out to first last. I remember saying, oh, do you mean I could do anything? You know, if it's raining, you know, yeah. I said, well, can I have everything off this man here? And I said, yeah, that's great. Just like, start the top starter and keep bringing things. I just tried. I did actually get that past move. Because it's still a hard-- ah, yeah, that was the real job. And then having a resistivity for like 50 minutes wasn't bad either. 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 near stories can rival his. But what about the seven other kidnapped tourists? The ones who didn't escape? Their ordeal goes on and on. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 throw in 20 miles back to shore in, you know, about 10 degrees water. If someone dumps you 20 miles out of shore, then 10 degrees water, you might as opposed to that. Get up and walk along, you know, sleep and warm afternoon sand, but just die and give up. It's easier to walk and keep going than you might think. Yeah, I think what else is to buy? Having no other choices, that helps. In the next episode, we meet Tom Wilson. In November 2008, a 35-year-old is on a routine work trip to visit a construction project at Tobar Inlet, a wild remote fjord on the coast of British Columbia. But when his small, charted plane meets a violent and horrifying end, John will be thrust into hell on Earth. 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 is only just begun. That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen right now by Joining Noiser Plus. Good football games are now on Disney Plus. It's going to be wild! A minute sampling of content for ESPN is now available. to all Disney+ subscribers. Upgrade to a plan that includes ESPN to access the full ESPN on Disney+ experience, terms apply. Hank joined B.J.'s wholesale club the day he became a father of 30. "I coach football." 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