Amanda Eller – 17 days in a Maui jungle

The island of Maui is a tropical paradise and makes up one of the most popular tourist spots in the Hawaii island chain. It’s also home to Amanda Eller, a 35-year-old yoga instructor who lives in Hawaii and enjoys the natural beauty of her home islands more than anywhere else in the world.

On the 8th of May, she decided to go for a hike in the Makawao forest reserve, a huge and dense jungle that spans the entire east side of the island. After leaving her phone and wallet in her car, she headed out onto one of the many jungle paths and walked for quite some distance. After a while, she walked off the path to rest and upon returning to it decided to go another direction back to her car. The following is a quote she made during an interview with “The Times”:

“I wanted to go back the way I’d come, but my gut was leading me another way — and I have a very strong gut instinct,” Eller said. “So, I said, my car is this way and I’m just going to keep going until I reach it.”

In the attempt to get back to her car, she became horribly lost and eventually lost sight of the path system. Fortunately, she told people where she was going and after not returning home for dinner the night she went missing, her boyfriend reported her disappearance to the authorities in the morning.

She spent the next 2 days trying to get back to her car, but after realising how lost she was the only goal from then on was to find her way out the jungle. Luckily rescue had already been dispatched and her family was offering a $10,000 reward to encourage people to help the search.

The rescue attempt was huge and involved divers, climbers, water search teams, rescue dogs, and even a small fleet of drones and a few helicopters. After a few days, her family increased the reward to $50,000, but at this point the volunteer team was huge, and if the people already out looking for her couldn’t find her, then she wasn’t going to be found at all.

As for Eller, the real troubles started on the 3rd day when she fell over a small cliff, injuring one of her knees which slowed her down greatly. At least water was never a problem as the Maui jungle has a very high level of humidity and it rains frequently, but food was starting to become an issue.

She mostly ate wild nuts and fruit, and at one point was so hungry she munched down 2 moths she managed to catch. Fortunately for her, she was in very good shape, being a yoga instructor and all, which gave her a huge advantage and helped her deal with the lack of food better than most would have.

Apart from the food problem, she said the worst thing about the situation was the cold, which gets as low as 15C at night time, something that would be much harder to deal with if you’re used to living in a tropical climate. After finding an abandoned boar den she crept inside and covered herself in ferns to form a makeshift blanket, she stuck close to the den for a few days as it was the only place to sleep where she wouldn’t get soaked.

The frequent rain was not only making her wet and cold, but it stirred up all the loose soil and made her drinking supply muddy.

After a while, the rescuers started to ask if she was even in the jungle in the first place, as no trace had been seen of her, and due to the size of the rescue attempt, questions started to be raised over whether she had been kidnapped from the parking lot. Luckily this wasn’t the case and on the 25th of May, 2019 Eller was spotted laying by a stream by one of the search helicopters.

She was taken to a hospital and apart from being a little sunburnt and super hungry, was otherwise fine. This rescue attempt was not only amazing in the size of the operation, but a GoFundMe page raised just over $76,000 to help search for her, donations from people who didn’t know she existed until they knew she was missing. There was also plenty left over from the donations which the family plan to spend on the Makawao forest reserve trail system to make it safer for hikers.