A BRITISH conservationist has told how she survived five days stranded in the Mexican jungle by eating peanuts and raw fish.

    Rachel Bradley was one of a group of four exploring the Yucatan Peninsula by river when they lost the canoes containing their GPS system, communication equipment, food and medical supplies.

    After leaving the river and heading into the jungle with their remaining food — just one bag of M&Ms and some caramelized peanuts — they spent five days fighting to survive before they were eventually rescued.

    Bradley, 31, from Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, was working for Ninth Wave Global, an environmental consultancy operating in remote areas.

    She told how the team — which included fellow Briton Mike Burgess, 52, of Plymouth — got lost while exploring the area due to unexpected rapids and a “labyrinth” of swamps and waterfalls created by heavy rain.

    Having hurtled over several waterfalls in their canoes — emerging each time covered in water-dwelling leeches — the group found themselves pushed further and further into the jungle.

    Bradley said, “The water just kept flowing faster and faster. But at this point it was too late to go back.”

    When two of their four boats flipped over and were lost, their food, first aid equipment and GPS navigation system also vanished. The team then swam and climbed their way through the jungle before finding a mangrove they decided to stay in.

    Bradley said, “We thought the safest place was just staying put and hoping someone could find us. For the next two days and two nights we stayed in this tree and explored a few different exit routes, walking to the other side of the palm field and swimming up and down stream.

    “We had a bag of M&Ms which we shared on the first evening and then we rationed a bag of caramelized peanuts I had — five each per sitting.” However, their meager supplies soon ran out.

    “By day three, my colleagues had started testing a local fruit they recognized and had caught some small fish using my mosquito net,” said Bradley. “They cut the heads off and swallowed them whole.”

    After five days they were discovered Oct. 23 by a passing Mexican man named Juan de Dios — or “John of the Gods” — who took them to safety at the nearest home. Bradley suffered cuts all over her legs from the palm leaves and an eye infection.

    (SD-Agencies)