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.

He spent Saturday morning on boardwalks and paved trails before going to the park’s six miles of Wood Duck Trail in the afternoon. He had been told the ducks frequented ponds about 200 yards from the end of the trail. But he later learned the ponds had dried up.

Signs at every trailhead tell visitors to stay on the walks but he said it “looked like no risk at all”, adding “I never thought of the swamps”.

He tried to make his way back to the trail using palm trees and shrubs as markers. They petered out into the swamp.

“I could never find my way across what appeared to be the wider part of the swamp,” Piedrahita said.

Eventually, he found a tiny island — “a cypress log and some higher mud” where he stayed until Wednesday.

When he didn’t return on Saturday, the taxi driver who was waiting for him flagged down a park ranger and a group searched until about midnight. On Sunday morning, Piedrahita could hear people calling for him, but he was not found. By Tuesday, the search crew had grown to more than 100 and he was found the following day.

He made a remarkably quick recovery from dehydration, exposure, muscle loss and some gastrointestinal and kidney problems resulting from dehydration and lack of food.