The odyssey of a pilot who survived 38 days lost in the Amazon

ST.PAUL.- “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday… Papa, Tango, India, Romeo, Juliett is located between Alenquer and the Californian track ”.

It is the SOS that he managed to launch on the radio. Pilot Antonio Sena, 36, disappeared on January 28 in the most remote part of the Brazilian Amazon while transporting supplies to an illegal mine.. The only engine of his plane suddenly stopped. Concentrated on the landing, he mentally reviewed the hours of the flight simulator. “Thank God, I found a small valley,” he explained Monday by phone from Brasilia.

While planning, he found a hole in this green sea of ​​dense canopies. And as he hit the branches, he slowed down. He lifted the nose of the Cessna 210 and wham… he was on the ground, soaked in gasoline, but alive. Aware. Whole.

Over the next 38 days, he starred in an adventure novel-worthy odyssey that lets peek into the new the gold rush in Brazil, to the illegal mines that make so much profit while polluting the world’s largest rainforest. They are populated with huts in the middle of the jungle with tens or hundreds of prospectors (gold diggers). Places where no one uses money, everything is paid for in gold. An illegal business moves between 20 and 30 tonnes per year. And the tolerance is such that a few years ago, Roraima, a state without a single mine, exported 194 kilos of gold.

That he survived almost unharmed – he lost 26 kilograms – surprises even those who know this region between the states of Pará and Amapá. A jungle survival course he took a long time ago has proven to be vital.

Slept away from streams to avoid animal ambushes. He is always amazed not to have encountered any of the top predators. Not a jaguar, not crocodiles, not anacondas. “To avoid attacks, he walked while making noise with the leaves. If you go in silence, you may inadvertently disturb them “, details. He has just found his mother, who due to the coronavirus was unable to travel to Santarém on March 6, the Amazonian city where he grew up.

Military rescue teams had given up when Sena was found by a family of chestnut pickers. The clan led by Doña María Jorge, with half a century in business, is one of the thousands of families who exploit the Amazon in a sustainable way. And legal. The pilot had the joy of his life; their rescuers, a huge fear.

After the accident, he remained near the wreckage of the plane as required by the rescue manuals. When after nine days he stopped hearing overflights, he knew he was dependent on himself. He set off towards the east, guided by the sun, because the aeronautical map on his mobile showed some tracks in the region.

He was too weak to hunt. To eat, he watched the monkeys “If they ate wild fruit, I would too”. He found nothing else while he was lost. “I ate rhea eggs three times, the only protein I took. Blue-skinned, they were white and yellow. And I found cocoa four times, ”he recalls. He was never satisfied.

The pilot got lost in a particularly precious area of ​​the Amazon, near the Maicuru Biological Reserve. Its biodiversity is such a precious gem that it enjoys the maximum protection of Brazilian law, explains the engineer forestal Jakeline Pereira, 40, by phone from Belém (Pará). “Human presence is totally prohibited because there are endemic species that do not exist anywhere else on the planet”, explains this specialist from the NGO Imazon.

Sena, who has 2400 flight hours, was heading towards an illegal mine called 13 de Maio which is in the nature reserve. The bumpy flight was Sena’s second there; the first was the day before. “I had never been in a mine in my life, but I didn’t see it because I didn’t get off the track,” explains the pilot.

On the other hand, engineer Pereira knows the place. “I befriended a gold digger from there and thanks to that in 2009, they opened their doors to us, ”he says of a trip during which he conducted a socio-economic study on the mining village. Because, When lawmakers granted legal protection to this nature reserve, the artisanal miners were already there. And there they continue. It is an illegal but tolerated means of subsistence. “I remember very well, there were about 400 prospectors, shops, women, cooks, prostitutes ”. As there is no road leading to it, everything must go by river or air. In the neighboring reserve, there were still 600 minors.

Sena took off in his small plane from Alenquer, a town on the shores of the Amazon. It would land on one of those illegal runways that don’t appear on conventional maps but have a name, California, for another gold rush. The largest in Brazil was in the 18th century in Minas Gerais.

The aviator says he accepted the post – transporting fuel and food to the mine – because the coronavirus destroyed the business he so carefully created on his return to Brazil after a pilot stage in Africa, in Chad.. “I opened a restaurant and a craft brewery, but in two months … Bang, the pandemic.” And he adds: “These circumstances led me to do the flights,” he adds.

The demand for gold has skyrocketed due to the increase in international prices and this means that more men are betting on everything to find nuggets that allow them to live comfortably, more supplies and more pilots. Illegal mining pays better than commercial aviation, and air incidents in the Amazon have escalated. The survivor assures that he will never return to the panoramic.

The engineer explains that because the deforestation caused by illegal mining is not so extensive, satellites do not easily detect it. But it is very harmful. “They pollute the rivers, they spill the mercury which they use to separate the gold there, the water changes color and contributes directly to the destruction” of flora and fauna. There, each miner rents a plot which he has been working, some for years. “We saw people who hadn’t been to town for 20 years.”

The pilot’s odyssey entered the final stages when he suddenly heard a chainsaw after days of loneliness, walking, hunger and severe pain. They were chestnut pickers. “I found a blank canvas with their material, their food… and I saw the first one,” Sena says enthusiastically. “At first they were afraid of me, I asked them for chestnuts. Another, more talkative, appeared and we went to his camp ”. He insists on his infinite gratitude to Dona Maria Jorge, his sons and daughters-in-law. It is a paradox that he was saved by a family that legally exploits the jungle in the Paru State Reserve, where harvesting is permitted..

After feeding him, they radioed for help. The pilot lost in the Amazon was alive. Ready to go home. After 38 days, he was taken in by helicopter by a military team and firefighters. With this takeoff, his odyssey ended.

THE COUNTRY