Yosshi Ghinsberg Incredible Wilderness Survival Stories

3 Incredible Wilderness Survival Stories

 

Miracles still happen.

 

We all love a good survival movie. Disaster struck, an accident happen, or someone gets lost, and now they find themselves in a place where they have to make do with what they have, and it is a matter of life or death. Danger lurks in every corner, the food is running out, and the last fishing line has just snapped with the hook on it - gone!

 

You are on the edge of your seat while you don’t know if they are going to make it or not. Is the food going to last? Is the wolf actually going to get them? And nasty, did they really just ate that grasshopper?!

 

You get so emotionally invested in the safety and well-being of the character of the movie and share small victories them, like making a fire and cry for them when times are extra hard.

 

Sometimes they make it out or get saved at the very last second… sometimes they don’t.

 

But you are entertained either way. Because that is what movies are designed to do: entertain!

 

But less often you stop to think about where these stories come from. Sure, some of it is made up, and the drama factor is added in a thick layer, but there is truth behind a lot of these stories. These stories that you find so entertaining on screen has often happened to someone. Someone that you and I might have known in real life.

 

And when the person is “real”, when this story is in the paper or television news instead of in a movie, everything changes. Now there is no entertainment factor �" it’s sad, tragic, and often very hard to even phantom how someone could have made it out alive.

 

Some stories are tragic. However, there are some stories that have great and happy endings.

 

Let’s look at three such stories:

 

Yosshi Ghinsberg �" The Man Who Survived A Waterfall in The Amazon

 

After completing his service in the Israeli Navy in 1981, from Ghinsberg wanted to go on a journey to the Amazon jungle to find an idol of his, Henri Charriére, to ask for his blessing and teaching to continue to do the work that Charriére has started. He wanted to find and bring tribes of the Amazon to civilisation. He worked to save up for the trip, but by the time he made it to South America, Charriére had passed away, and the work was already done.

 

He travelled to Columbia, where he met Marcus Stamm who was busy with expeditions, and they became friends and travelled together.

 

In Bolivia, he met Karl Ruprechter, who claimed to be a geologist on an expedition to find gold in the remote village of Tacana, in the Amazon. Ghinsberg decided to join him and two other friends came with, Marcus Stamm and Kevin Gale.

 

When the four arrived in the Amazonian town of Rurrenabaque, the local people warned them about all the danger they might come across, but they were determined to keep going by sailboat along the Beni River, stopping along the way for supplies from small villages. But supplies became real low and they were forced to eat monkey meat to survive.

 

Stamm didn’t want to eat the meat and became too weak to continue the journey. It also came to light that Ruprechter was, in fact, a criminal looking for gold and not a geologist as he claimed. Due to the disagreement and distrust, the group broke up, and Ruprechter and Stamm left to go back to Tacana.

 

Ghinsberg and Gale built a raft to travel up the Tuichi River. When the raft got to a near a waterfall, they lost control and while Gale made it out, Ghinsberg went over the fall. Ghinsberg went upstream for 5 days looking for Gale, but could not find him and was now alone in the jungle. Gale was rescued by local fishermen after 5 days.

 

Ghinsberg ended up spending 3 weeks in the jungle without supplies and equipment in a very remote part of the jungle. He almost got killed by wild animals a couple of times, had insect bites all over him, and almost drowned a few times.

 

He had no food and had to rely on berries and fruit and the odd egg that from a nest.

 

We all need some sort of motivation to keep us going in tough times. For Ghinsberg, he had hallucinated that there was a woman with him and everything he did, he started doing for her sake, to try and save her. It helped him and kept him going.

 

After three weeks, one day he heard engines of a boat and met Gale and some of the local people who was looking for him. They found him on day three of their search mission, just as they were about to give up.

 

He spent three months in hospital in recovery after that.

 

 

Real stories with real people who have survived the harshest of conditions against all odds. A true testament to the fighting spirit in all of us and examples of just how strong the will to survive can be.

 

There are many stories just like these that can inspire all of us to keep going in tough times and to never give up hope, even when the situation looks dire. Today, more than ever, must we remain strong in the face of adversity. Visit