It was supposed to be a relaxing sailing trip for Maria das Graças Mota Bernardo and her husband, José Nilson de Souza Bernardo.
But on the first day of going down river in the Amazon jungle, things went wrong.
De Souza Bernardo fell ill and suffered a fatal heart attack at midnight on their boat, leaving Mota Bernardo to fend for herself.
It was her first fishing trip and she had no idea what to do next.
Mota Bernardo then tied their canoe to a tree and took their other boat to look for help, but the engine stopped working a short while later.
According to Insider, she was left adrift on the river Rio Negro in the Amazon jungle.
“She went to the bow and started paddling. She spent all those days paddling,” her daughter Cristiane told “The Independent”.
Mota Bernardo resorted to banging on pots and pans, screaming for help at the top of her lungs, but no one heard or came.
At one point, a man passed by in a boat but ignored her calls for help, Cristiane told the publication.
Mota Bernardo spent her days eating raw fish, flour and drinking water.
At one time, she had to move to the other side of the boat to avoid the smell of her husband’s decaying corpse.
She was rescued several days later by a Brazilian navy helicopter after their family alerted authorities to their missing parents.
In 2021, a pilot managed to survive 38 days in the Amazon after his plane crashed.
Antonio Sena was flying a single-prop Cessna 210 over the Brazilian Amazon when the engine suddenly stopped, leaving him minutes to find a spot in the jungle to crash-land, AFP reported.
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