Colombian university head, 65, survives five days in US swamp

FRANCISCO PIEDRAHITA, a 65-year-old head of a university in Colombia, said he heard searchers and called for help the morning after he got lost in a Louisiana swamp. But it was three more days before he was found.

To survive, he said, he ate a few plant stems. “For drink I had to use urine,” he said yesterday, just before leaving the hospital where he was taken after a helicopter crew spotted him on Wednesday.

Piedrahita was at the Jean Lafitte National Historic Park and Preserve’s Barataria Unit — 23,000 acres of swamp, marsh and forest near New Orleans when he got lost on Saturday on a walk to photograph some whistling ducks.