A five-year-old boy who went missing during a family walk in Argentina has been found safe and well, after spending 24 hours lost in the El Salado desert in San Juan province.
Authorities in the western province and some 1,000 volunteers went searching for the boy – with a former Dakar Rally motorcyclist finding him 21 kilometres (13 miles) from where he was last seen.
The child, Benjamin, was hospitalised for slight dehydration.
"I was cold, I slept badly, leaning on a rock," he told the newspaper Clarín upon leaving hospital Tuesday.
The boy said he had drunk from a stream and eaten grass.
"He spent 24 hours in nature, that is not nothing," said Alberto Ontiveros, the motorcyclist who found him, noting that wild pumas and snakes roam the area. He called the child's re-appearance "a miracle."
Temperatures in the region, which are around 30 degrees Celsius during the day, drop at zero at night-time.
- TIMES/AFP
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