The Book: Jungle: A Harrowing True Story of Survival, by Yossi Ghinsberg
The Story: This is a wild one. This guy, Yossi, is traveling in South America and meets up with a couple other guys who are doing the same thing. They form a quick friendship. They meet a guy named Karl who tells them that he is headed into the jungle to do some work (he’s a biologist/gold prospector) and invites them along. The guys jump at the chance and spend a couple of weeks gearing up for the trip, which they expect to be a few weeks long.
Everything kind of starts out rough and the friendship that the guys has formed starts to unravel. After a couple of weeks, Karl and one of the guys, Marcus, decide to head back by a fairly easy route. Kevin and Yosssi decide to go on with the planned route and meet the guys back in the city in a couple of weeks. Not even two days later, Yossi ends up going over a waterfall on a raft made of balsa wood and getting separated from Kevin.
He’s solo.
The rest of the book is his crazy and true story of survival. Everything that could go wrong seemed to go wrong, from a flood, to getting all turned around, to large animals, to getting nearly eaten alive by termites. He did have luck on his side more than once and the fact that he made it through all of this is pretty much incredible.
What I Thought: I was telling a friend that I have found myself really drawn to survival-type stories lately and he about jumped out of his seat recommending this one to me. That evening, he gave it to me to read and couldn’t wait to hear what I thought about it.
This book was seriously amazing. The story of Yossi’s survival was honest and seriously just crazy. I kept telling myself over and over that obviously he makes it because he lived to write the book, but sometimes I wasn’t so sure that he was going to get out of this crazy situation.
I was super impressed with Yossi’s writing style, especially when you take into consideration that he’s not a writer. This book was well thought out and well executed. It wasn’t amazing literature by any means, but that wasn’t really the point. He did a good job.
I cannot tell you how many times I was just seriously on the edge of my seat. I couldn’t believe that they trusted Karl from the get-go and I just wanted to smack them around a little bit. The other obviously-bad choices that the guys made just floored me. So did Yossi’s survival instinct. He did things without thinking that would have never crossed my mind. Although he had no real idea where he was in the jungle, he was able to figure it out and get himself headed in the right direction. I’m pretty sure I just would have laid on a beach somewhere until a) someone found me or b) I got eaten by a jaguar. Yossi even knew where to find food and how to build a tent. Impressive stuff.
I read online that after this was written, the tv show I Shouldn’t Be Alive did a feature on Yossi & his friends’ journey and now I’ve got Shaun on the hunt for it. I’ll let you know how it is!
Conclusion: Really a great read. Would be an excellent book for someone who loves travel, the outdoors, or just reading a good survival story. Would make a great Father’s Day present for a reading Dad!