‘I drank my own urine': University president describes how he survived for days lost in a swamp

Daily Mail 05/29/2011 17:44

Francisco Piedrahita, a university professor from Colombia, holds a stuffed male wood duck as his son Esteban looks on at West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero, La., He was found Wednesday after four days lost in Jean Lafitte National Park.

A university president from Columbia got more than he bargained for while on a trip to the U.S. after he spent nearly five days lost in the Louisiana Bayou surviving on nothing more than plant stems to eat and his own urine to drink.

People he had corresponded with by email, told Mr. Piedrahita that the ducks frequented ponds about 200 yards from the end of the trail, but he learned the hard way that they had dried up.

To survive he ate a few plant stems. 'For drink I had to use urine,' Piedrahita said to reporters before he was due to leave the hospital Thursday evening.

A walk in the park 'looked like no risk at all,' He also said, which is why he had chosen to leave his cell phone in a safe at his hotel before venturing to the park.

Piedrahita recounted how he had spent Saturday morning on the 2.5 miles of boardwalk and paved trails on one side of a two-lane highway, had lunch with the cabbie, the went off for the trail on his own.

When he took the dirt trail he figured the fact that it wasn't built up meant there was no need for the boardwalk.

'I never thought of the swamps,'he said.

‘I drank my own urine': University president describes how he survived for days lost in a swamp - Louisiana - USA - weird

Francisco Piedrahita's wife Claudia, left, gives him a kiss as he is transferred to a waiting ambulance.

Once he discovered that the ponds were dried up, Piedrahita made his way back to the trail, then to where he thought the parking lot was, and then on to traffic he heard on a nearby highway. He used palmetto trees and white-flowered shrubs as markers along the way.

Mr.Piedrahita said he had trouble navigating through the marsh landscape.

'I never thought of the swamps,' he said.

'When it was this deep, it is no problem,' he said, holding his hands about a foot apart. 'But when it is this deep'-his hands closer to two feet apart-'it is a big problem.'

'I could never find my way across what appeared to be the wider part of the swamp,' he said.

Mr.Piedrahita had told the cab driver that he would be back in less than an hour when he headed off on the trail. When two hours had passed, the cabbie flagged down a park ranger.