Amanda Eller, a physical therapist and yoga instructor aged 35 years, was reported missing on May 8th after she went on a hike in Maui, Hawaii. In what seems to be a miracle, she has now been rescued more than two weeks later as on 25th May. Eller had not taken her phone with her when she embarked on her hike at the Makawao Forest Reserve trail in Maui. The braveheart survived 17 days by staying in a boar’s den. She managed to sustain herself on wild fruits and moths.

Eller was found by a rescue team lying on the bed of a stream. She was around 4 miles from where she left her car. Speaking about her battle for life, Eller said: “I wanted to give up. But the only option I had was life or death. 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. So, I said, my car is this way and I'm just going to keep going until I reach it.”

“I heard this voice that said, ‘If you want to live, keep going.’ And as soon as I would doubt my intuition and try to go another way than where it was telling me, something would stop me, a branch would fall on me, I'd stub my toe, or I'd trip. So I was like, ‘O.K., there is only one way to go.’ The whole time I was going deeper into the jungle, even though I thought I was going back where I came from. I was getting so skinny that I was really starting to doubt if I could survive.”

Eller suffered a broken leg after a fall and sunburns. She lost her shoes within 4 days in the wild in a flash flood. Rescuers were ecstatic when they spotted her from the helicopter. She was taken to Maui Memorial Hospital. A volunteer tweeted: “THEY DID IT!!! #findamanda Amanda Eller has been found alive! After 17 days lost in the steep jungles of East Maui, the never-ending determination & steadfast faith of THESE and HUNDREDS of volunteer searchers paid off!” An extremely relieved Eller’s father said: “She was smart. She was strong. She was prepared. We said that at the beginning and it was absolutely true. She was prepared for this. She was prepared for it her whole life.”