Tourist found after 18 days in mountains

A TOURIST has been found alive 18 days after falling into a deep hole while walking in Spanish mountains.

A group of mountaineers found Dutch woman Mary-Anne Goossens, 48, trapped among boulders close to the source of the Chillar River outside the resort town of Nerja.

They were unable to rescue her, but left food and clothing before alerting regional emergency services. She was reported to be weak but uninjured.

Police mountain rescue teams had been dispatched to the area to find her.

Officers said Ms Goossens had some food when she set out walking. Water from a nearby spring also helped her survive.

Goossens was found between the towns of Nerja and Cómpeta, in a gorge near the Chillar river, according to Spanish media.

The mother-of-two had travelled to Malaga for a ten-day holiday but disappeared on June 16, just a day after she arrived in the country. Her son, Fritz, launched an appeal for help to find her and the family travelled to Spain to search for her.

According to reports, she amazed rescuers by walking from the helicopter into the emergency unit of the nearby Comarcal de la Axarquia after being airlifted there.

The Daily Telegraph last night quoted a family member as saying the librarian had become lost in the mountains after straying off the path: “We don’t have all the details yet, but it seems that she got lost after spending a day hiking in a beautiful natural area. It got dark very quickly and she kept walking and walking hoping to find a village,” Niek Jochemus, a family friend from her home in Stramproy, told the paper.

He described his joy when the family heard Ms Goossens had been found alive.

“I was here at the house with the family when she came on the line and said she was OK and it was the most amazing moment.

”There were goose bumps all over the place and we ran into the garden and jumped around whooping with joy.”

“We’re very curious to find out exactly what happened out there but we’ll wait till she’s recovered a little.”

“Obviously we went through various options: that she may have fallen down a cliff and was injured, or that she could have been taken by someone with bad intentions. We even considered that she had just disappeared of her own volition to start a new life somewhere, but dismissed that as impossible.”