Man lost in the Bolivian Amazon saved by monkeys

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"Keeping tabs on the behavior, Feizar(the guide) had invited the tourists at the lodge to participate in a Pachamama ceremony—a tradition involving coca leaves, candles, and cigarettes—to thank Pachamama, or Mother Earth, for giving them permission to enter the forest.

When Maykool was asked to join the ceremony alongside the group, he had refused, Feizar said. And when a guide had returned to his cabin to check on him, he was nowhere to be found. The amount of time that had passed between when Maykool was last seen and when someone went back for him was only five minutes.

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Maykool seemed to have completely vanished.

“It’s because he offended the Pachamama.” Feizar said. “He didn’t want to participate in the ceremony.”

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Desperate for help, one of Feizar’s guides called two well-known shamans, Romulo and his wife Tiburcia, and asked them to bring Maykool back. The shamans arrived at the lodge, carrying thick blocks of sugar tableaux, cigarettes, cans of beer, coca leaves, wine bottles, candles, sparkling confetti, and a large wooden cross—all materials they would need to breach the spiritual domain.

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six tormenting days after Maykool’s disappearance, a breakthrough came: one of the rangers found a lone, muddy sock on the rainforest floor. When it was taken back to the family, Maykool’s step-mother emotionally confirmed it was his.

For the shamans, the sock changed everything; it was a window into Maykool’s soul, a way to reach him on a spiritual plane and call him back to reality

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fter two more sleepless nights praying to the Pachamama, Romulo and Tiburcia claimed that their payments had been accepted and they were finally able to make contact with Maykool’s soul

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Incredibly, he was able to instead survive by following a group of monkeys, who dropped him fruit and lead him to shelter and water every day.

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Maykool revealed that the night he disappeared, strange, terrible thoughts had begun to creep into his mind. He said he had an irresistible urge to get out of the rainforest.

“I started running,” he said. “I was wearing sandals and I said no, they would slow me down. I threw away the sandals, then the cell phone and my flashlight. And after running so much, I stopped under a tree and I started thinking. What had I done, what was I doing? And when I wanted to get back it wasn’t possible.”

...Maykool’s rescuers maintain the belief that Duende drove him temporarily insane and lured him into another dimension. His behavior fits all the signs, they say—the maddening thoughts, the shamans’ testimony, his strange disappearance

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