In the Amazon,
his plane crashed.
Then came the difficult part.
When his plane went down in a remote area, a Brazilian pilot working for wildcat miners narrowly avoided death. He walked for 36 days across the jungle before being rescued.
When the lone engine cut out, the pilot was 3,000 feet above the Amazon, flying a small propeller plane on his maiden assignment for wildcat miners deep in the forest.
He inhaled deeply and scanned the vast emerald green canopy beneath him. He estimated that bringing down the plane and its extremely flammable cargo of 160 gallons of diesel fuel would take about five minutes.
He announced his impending crash to anyone who may be listening on a handheld radio, noticing that he was about halfway to his destination, a mine known as California.
Antônio Sena then aimed for a small valley lined with palm trees as his plane descended.
He remembers saying, “There!” “Palm trees indicate the presence of water, possibly a river.”
Mr. Sena had heard numerous stories of deadly accidents since becoming a pilot nine years before. Mr. Sena realized something exhilarating as his plane scraped a few trees and then crashed into the ground as it rolled to a halt: he had survived.
He scrambled away from the plane with a pocketknife, a torch, a couple of lighters, and a phone with low battery life. It erupted in flames a short time later. He then sat down and waited for his rescue.
It had been a long time coming.
Mr. Sena said in a phone interview last week that he initially camped out next to the wreckage of the 48-year-old Cessna 210L, hoping it would be his best chance of being discovered. And search planes did, in reality, circle the area for several days before continuing on their way.
Mr. Sena clarified, “They flew right over but couldn’t see me.”
When he heard the thud of propellers, he waved and cried, but it was in vain.
Mr. Sena gave up hope of being saved near the ruins and set out on a 17-mile trek through the rainforest, which was home to jaguars, venomous insects, and anacondas.
He reappeared 36 days later, on March 6, to share a tale that has transfixed Brazilians — a remarkable bit of good news for a country that has been ravaged by the Covid-19 crisis for a year.
His story, however, shed light on Brazil’s illicit mining industry, which has thrived in Indigenous lands and other sections of the Amazon that are supposed to be protected areas in recent decades. The illegal mine to which he was on his way is located in the Maicuru reserve, which allows only certain activities that are necessary to protect the land.
Mr. Sena’s ordeal started on January 28 at a small airstrip in the state of Pará. He explained that his task was to transport diesel fuel to miners in a remote location where they had constructed a temporary landing strip.
He admitted that he took the job only reluctantly. During the pandemic, flying jobs had become scarce, and he was barely scraping by with a small bar in his hometown of Santarém.
“I had to let go of my own expectations to get through this difficult period,” he said, adding that the working conditions were extremely hazardous. “I’d never fly again for wildcat mining.”
Mr. Sena, 36, began walking after the plane crashed and it became apparent that support would not come from the sky.
He turned on his dying phone one last time to launch a geolocation app, then decided to head in the direction of the Paru River, which was 60 miles away, after looking at the map. It was the most populous place he was aware of.
Mr. Sena walked only in the mornings for days, taking advantage of the sun’s location to head eastward toward the river. After hours of slogging through swamps and ducking under vines, he’d stop in the afternoon to set up camp, sheltering himself from the rain with palm trees and branches.
Mr. Sena was well aware that predators prefer to hunt near water, where food is plentiful. As a result, he slept on hills. However, he was constantly attacked by spider monkey packs, which attempted to wreck his precarious shelters.
He described them as “very territorial.” “I never want to run into them again.”
The monkeys, on the other hand, were a blessing: after seeing them consume a small, bright pink fruit known as breu, Mr. Sena assumed it was healthy for humans to eat, and it became his primary source of nutrition. Aside from that, he only ate three tiny blue eggs from inambu birds.
A clicking noise stopped him in his tracks one afternoon, about four weeks after the accident, when he had gone three days without feeding. What a chainsaw!
Mr. Sena was overjoyed, almost euphoric, but decided it was best to spend the night there. As night fell, he was afraid he’d get lost trying to find the source of the noise.
Before going to sleep, he recalls praying, “God, let them use this chain saw again.”
He heard it again the next morning, but only for a few seconds. As a result, he continued walking east, his gaze fixed on the water. He noticed a white tarpaulin and a man cracking nuts beside it later that afternoon.
Mr. Sena had happened across a gathering of Brazil nut collectors.
Maria Jorge dos Santos Tavares, 67, led the party, which had not collected nuts in that part of the rainforest in three years.
However, Ms. Santos Tavares’ husband died in the pandemic, and the family’s debts rose as they mourned. They started looking deeper into the forest for nuts as their financial condition deteriorated.
Mr. Sena had lost 55 pounds by the time Ms. Santos Tavares met him. So she fed him and gave him shelter before calling her daughter Mirian, who lives in a state, on the radio and asking her to contact the pilot’s mother.
Mirian admitted that she had difficulty persuading Mr. Sena’s family that he was still alive at first. She then went on to describe her own family’s hardships.
She recalls telling one of Mr. Sena’s relatives, “We lost a life, and you won one.” “I guess that’s how God intended it to be.”
Ms. Santos Tavares returned to the forest after bringing Mr. Sena to a police helicopter, where she expects to spend the next month gathering nuts.
Mr. Sena said he came away from his ordeal with a renewed respect for the rainforest, which is being razed every day by the illegal miners for whom he briefly worked.
“I wouldn’t have had water, shelter, or food if I had dropped somewhere in a desolate plantation site,” he said. “The Amazon is a treasure trove.”
