Amazon miracle kids rescue predicted by volunteer on ayahuasca

Publish date: 2024-08-17

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That’s a trip!

Some may say it was a miracle or divine intervention that led rescuers to find four children alive in the Colombian jungle 40 days after their plane crashed — but according to the search crews, it was thanks to psychedelics.

The Indigenous volunteers turned to one of the most sacred rituals of the Amazon and ingested yagé, commonly known as ayahuasca — a bitter hallucinogenic tea made of plants native to the rainforest — in hopes the potion would induce visions that could lead them to the young siblings.

That day on June 9, members of the Columbian military who joined the search found the kids, ages 13, 9, 4, and 11 months, just 3 miles from the crash site.

The siblings had survived 40 days despite punishing rains, harsh terrain and limited supplies — a feat officials chalk up to eldest sibling Lesly’s knowledge of how to survive in the rainforest, which was taught to her by her grandmother.

Four children all under the age of 14 survived 40 days in the Colombian jungle after their plane crashed and killed three adults on board.

Henry Guerrero, a volunteer from the children’s home village near Araracuara, told The Associated Press his aunt prepared the yagé for the group.

“I told them, ‘There’s nothing to do here. We will not find them with the naked eye. The last resource is to take yagé,’” Guerrero, 56, said. “The trip really takes place in very special moments. It is something very spiritual.”

Yagé has been used as a cure for all ailments by people in Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Brazil.

The siblings survived thanks to foraging and hunting skills taught to them by their grandmother.

Manuel Ranoque, the father of the two youngest children, drank the concoction, but after hours of psychotropic effects claimed it hadn’t worked.

The next morning, elder José Rubio finished the bottle of yagé, hallucinated for a few hours, vomited and told the men: “We’ll find the children today.”

Just a few hours later, a soldier heard via radio that a rescue dog had spotted the children in a small clearing just 3 miles from the crash site — an area just 66 feet from where the nearly 200-person search teams had previously passed.

Rescuers had come within 66 feet of the missing children’s base without realizing how close they had been. Fernando Vergara

Lesly, Soleiny, Tien and Cristin — who were noticeably thinner and covered in scratches and insect bites — were airlifted out of the dense forest and rushed to health professionals.

The siblings had survived 40 days by collecting water in a soda bottle and eating cassava flour, fruit and seeds. They were found with two small bags holding clothes, a towel, a flashlight, two phones and a music box.

They were the sole survivors of the May 1 crash — three adults, including their mother, died within the first two weeks that the Cessna single-engine propeller plane nosedived.

Manuel Ranoque and a group elder ingested yagé in hopes the visions would help them find the children. Fernando Vergara

Their quick thinking and survival skills are certainly what saved them, but Ranoque also credited the yagé and the vision of the elder among their group for their rescue.

“This is a spiritual world,” he said, and the yagé “is of the utmost respect. It is the maximum concentration that is made in our spiritual world as an indigenous people.”

That’s why they drank the tea in the jungle, he said: “That was so that the goblin, that cursed devil, would release my children.”

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