Yossi Ghinsberg - Lost in the Jungle: A Harrowing True Story of Survival

Kevins second rescue mission was both arduous and disappointing. Only one of the Israelis stuck with him to the end, and their two Bolivian guides often called on them for help.

They started out from the village of Ipurama, which had been Karl and Marcuss destination. They progressed along the Ipurama River, searching its banks for signs of them. Within a few days they had made it down to where the Ipurama flows into the Tuichi, the place where our party had split up. From there they started back, painstakingly searching both banks of the river.

They never found a single trace, any sign at all that Karl and Marcus had passed that way: no campfires, shreds of clothing, broken branches, faeces, or footprints. Nothing. It was as if the two of them had vanished into the jungle air.

I later met up with Kevin in Brazil, in Salvador, the capital of Bahia. I had been cared for solicitously by my uncle in So Paulo. My feet were almost entirely healed, and the enormous quantity of steaks that I had downed had gotten my weight back up and cured my anaemia. We went to Rio de Janeiro together for Carnaval. Then Kevin returned to the United States, and I went home to Israel.

A few months later I flew to Oregon, where I met Kevins wonderful family. Then I went to visit Marcuss family in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. It was a difficult meeting. They wanted to know every detail of our trip and Marcuss disappearance. I told them the whole truth, keeping nothing back. We cried together.

As a final gesture Marcuss father held a sort of rite of absolution. He thanked me for coming to see them and for telling them all I could about their son. He ordered me to stop feeling guilty and asked me to pass that message on to Kevin too.

While it seemed that Marcuss father had given up hope, his mother, a devoted spiritualist, harboured not the slightest doubt that her younger son was alive: if he were dead, she maintained, he would have contacted her from the other side; he would have found a way to tell her goodbye. I knew what she referred to, as I remembered Marcus had told me once about the telepathic communication hed had his entire life with his mother.

Her faith never diminished. A year later she financed a group of Seventh-day Adventists, who agreed to form a search party. They came back empty-handed, battered, and bitten.

Rainer, Marcuss brother, believed that Karl had planned for us to separate from the beginning. He suggested that Karl could have hidden food and equipment earlier at the junction of the Ipurama and Tuichi rivers, then engineered our split.

Karl could have led Kevin and me to believe that he was heading up the Ipurama in the direction of the village, but in fact, gone off in the opposite direction, toward the Peruvian border. Karl had done so, in Rainers opinion, so that it would appear as if something had happened to them, that they had perished in the jungle. Then Karl could have easily assumed a new identity.

Kevin, while still in Bolivia, met a charming Israeli girl at the old-folks home. Orna joined him on his search for Marcus and Karl. As if that drama wasnt enough for him, Kevin was also falling in love. About a year later Kevin arrived in Israel for a reunion with Orna, and soon after they married. They live happily near Tel Aviv with their two beautiful sons, Eyal and Yuval. Kevin and I are close friends to this very day. I love him like my brother. I owe him my life, for which I will be eternally indebted to him. I admire him for the person he is, a giant of a man. Karl used to call him strong like three men, referring not only to his body, but also his special spirit. Kevin will always be a role model for me, for he is one of those rare people of continuously high morals; he never hesitated when immediate decisions or action were needed. Kevin, from the bottom of my heart, thank you, my brother, my friend, forever.

Six years after coming back from Tuichi, I was contacted by an Israeli magazine with an offer to write several articles about South America. This was my first opportunity to return to Rurrenabaque. I found that it had changed. The town was bigger, busier. Settlers from the altiplano had flocked there by the thousands. Convoys of trucks, arriving empty, left creaking under loads of mahogany. Saloons had materialised and with them loud music and the stench of urine.

Tico seemed happy to see me and delighted to take me up the Tuichi in his motorboat. The river was as magnificent and wild as before. We set out for San Jos, still the only settlement on the river, and continued to Progreso, where I had been rescued. It was a less emotional journey than I had expected. In fact, I was surprised how much I enjoyed myself. There was no animosity between me and the rainforest. On the contrary, I felt a strong attraction and was determined to make the jungle a part of my life.

Back in Rurrenabaque I was introduced to an old Hungarian, a refugee from World War II, and though he was drunk when we met, I found what he told beyond compelling. He began by claiming to know Karl well. He hadnt seen him for some time, but just a few months earlier in Cochabamba a Swiss priest had mentioned that Karl had visited not long before.

Excited, I flew to Cochabamba and found the priest, Father Erich, at a mission just outside town. Both he and Sister Ingrid, a nun who also lived at the mission, confirmed that Karl was alive, living nearby in the town of Santa Cruz. They showed me a photo they said was recent and told me stories of troubles he had caused them. I left bewildered: I wanted to believe, and I didnt want to believe. In no time I was in Santa Cruz and spent a week doing the best detective work I could but found not a single bit of corroborating evidence.

I had maintained contact with Marcuss mother and knew that she had never accepted her sons death. About two years after my return from Rurrenabaque I flew at her request to Schaffhausen to meet with her. She insisted that she had new information to share, information, it turned out, she had received from a clairvoyant renowned for his success in finding lost relatives.

Marcus is still alive, she told me. That is certain. He lives in Peru on a high plateau with Indians who found him nearly dead and nursed him back to health. He has lost his memory, which prevents his coming home. On a map of Peru she had marked a remote Andean community. She gave me the map and asked me to go there to look for him. I agreed.