Remarkable SurvivalOn Christmas Eve, 1971, just a few hours after attending her high school, 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke, got on a flight from Lima, Peru, to Pucallpa. She was heading out to join her father, Hans-Wilhelm, a famous German zoologist, who was working at a remote research station in the rainforest.Approximately 30 minutes into the flight, the plane flew into a storm with thunder and lightning. The right wing motor was hit by lightning and the aircraft broke apart in the air. Still strapped to her seat, Juliane was ejected from the aircraft and fell approximately 2 miles into the dense Peruvian rainforest. She was lying on the ground, dressed in only a sleeveless mini-dress and was missing one of her sandals and her glasses. It took Juliane half the day just to be able to stand, but eventually she managed it and set out to find help. During her search, she found a bag of candy, and more significantly, a stream. Her father had once given her advice that if she were ever lost in the rainforest and came across a stream or river, she should follow it downstream because people tend to live on or near water.Juliane then set off. She walked as much as possible in the river as it was an easier way to go, rather than through the dense jungle. On the tenth day she came across a boat, which at first she thought was a mirage until she finally came up to it and touched it. Next to the boat was a path, which she could hardly crawl up. At the end of the path was a small hut, where Juliane found an outboard motor and some diesel fuel in a barrel. She tried to sleep in the hut, but found the ground to be much too hard, so she went back down to the riverside and lay down in the sand.The next day, Juliane woke up and, hearing frogs all around her, tried to catch some to eat. Luckily for her she was unable to as they were poisonous dart frogs. She soon heard voices. Three people came out of the forest and spotted her. At first they thought she was a “Yemanja”, a blond, pale-skinned water spirit. When they saw her, they were pretty frightened. However, she explained what had happened and how she had got there, and they had heard of the plane crash, so accepted her story. They then fed her and cared for her wounds as best as they could and took her downstream to a village. A local pilot knew of some missionaries nearby running a hospital in Pucallpa, where she got after a 15-minute fearful flight and where the day after Juliane’s rescue she was reunited with her father.Juliane moved to Germany, where she fully recovered from her injuries. Like her parents, she studied biology at university. She went to Peru in the early eighties to study the area’s native bats. In 1998, she returned to the site of the crash for the documentary Wings of Hope about her incredible story that was made for German television by Werner Herzog. This trip inspired her to tell a tale of her remarkable survival in the book called When I Fell From the Sky, for which she received the Corine Literature Prize in 2011. Koepcke’s experience is also the subject of a feature-length fictional film.Why did Juliane decide to spend the night by the riverside?