Story By: Maja Mishevksa, Sub Editor: Marija Stojkoska, Agency: Newsflash

The mum and three kids who survived in the Colombian jungle for 34 days by eating wild fruits after becoming lost on holiday have revealed how they were terrified of being eaten by predators.

According to reports, 40-year-old Maria Olivia Perez and her three children, Maryi, 14, Jean Carlo, 12, and Geraldine, 10, became lost in the Colombian jungle on 19th December.

The family members were reportedly found 34 days later near the village of La Esperanza in the northern Peruvian sector of Yubineto, which nestles on the border with Colombia, by members of the indigenous Secoya community.

The family was following the Putumayo River when they unknowingly crossed into Peru, and they spent most of the 34 days wandering the jungle barefoot.

The children’s father Alex Andres Parra, who was not with them during the 34-day ordeal, told local media: “They were walking from one property to another but became lost on their way. They were rescued last week. All of them suffered with chronic malnourishment, skin conditions and lot of bites and stings.”

Twelve-year-old Jean Carlo said: “We slept in palm leaves with snakes and wild animals around us.”

Jean Carlo and his sister Geraldine said the most difficult part of the ordeal was not the lack of food, but the mites and insect bites.

Their mother said they spent the first night hugging each other under a tree in the pouring rain after realising they were lost and unable to get back to her waiting husband at the property they left earlier in the day.

She said they did not dare to eat anything for the first five days, and only drank water from gorges they came across.

If they saw footprints or tracks of large animals, they changed their route to avoid a possible encounter with a deadly jungle predator.

Just after Christmas, Maria said they started to eat seeds and fruits in the jungle.

She told local media: “I did not like it, I always thought they might be poisonous. If the kids ate them and I didn’t, I always worried that I would be alive when they were dead. That’s why I ate them as well.”

After 34 days, they found by a man in a boat with his four children who took the exhausted family members to an indigenous Secoya settlement who then alerted the authorities.

According to local media, the family is being treated in hospital for malnourishment and infections caused by mites and insects.

Reports said that their father has had to leave his job to take care of his stricken family in hospital.

They are appealing to the public to send them food and clothes as well as a place for Alex to stay while his loved ones are recovering.

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