Kidnapped in Colombia: Gap Year Gone Wrong (Part 1 of 2)

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0:56It's the dead of night. September the 12th, 2003, in the far north of Colombia. Somewhere deep in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, a group of armed men creep through the jungle. In their camouflage and black flak jackets, the men are almost invisible, blending with the darkness around them, detectable only by the shards of silver moonlight glinting off the muzzles of their assault rifles.

1:28They emerge from the jungle onto a treeless hilltop, where they spread out, swift, choreographed, weapons poised. Ahead, silhouetted against the indigo sky, are the shadowy outlines of two wooden cabins. The night air is cool as the men steal across the clearing, the ground beneath their boots still wet from yesterday's rain. When they reach the cabins, the twenty or so men divide into smaller units. with one group entering the first cabin, another entering the second.

2:09In the hammock nearest the door of the second one, 19-year-old Matt Scott wakes with a startled intake of breath. Somebody is poking him in the ribs. He rolls over and sees a dark figure looming over him. Matt recoils sharply and reaches for his glasses The blurry shape standing above his bed comes into focus A man wearing military fatigues Pointing an assault rifle directly at him I immediately, I think, assumed that we were being robbed And I also, I think, determined instantly That this was not a good situation But this is not a robbery. These men aren't looking for money or valuables. And however bad a situation Matt thinks this is, the reality is even worse.

3:04I'd only seen up to this point the two armed men who'd woken up and asked for our nationality. I now saw another 20. That was the moment where I was dramatically recalibrating what was going on. At that point, things had already gone very wrong.

3:30Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives.

3:54In this episode, we meet British backpacker Matt Scott. In September 2003, he is nearing the end of his gap year, having spent the past seven months traveling around South America. With just eight days remaining before his flight home to London, Matt signs up for a guided trek to the Lost City, an archaeological site nestled deep in the mountains of northern Colombia. It's supposed to be one final adventure, a memorable way to cap off seven unforgettable months. And for the first three days, the trip proves exactly that. But everything changes in the early hours of day four, as a mysterious group of armed men storm his camp.

4:37As he and his fellow tourists are forced out of bed and into the dark jungle, Matt will be left to wonder, who are these men? And what do they want? About the fifth time of asking him where he was going and how long it was going to take, he said, we're going to march three days and then the bosses will decide what to do with you. And I thought, that sounds all kinds of bad. As he is marched through the mountains towards an unknown fate, Matt is faced with a choice. Does he follow orders and potentially endure a lengthy captivity? or does he take his chances against the jungle and run for it? I thought that by escaping, I retained a lot of agency in my life and made a positive decision to do something, even though it was very dangerous.

5:31I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.

5:58It's early September 2003, Santa Marta, Colombia. A 19-year-old British tourist runs full pelt down a busy street, weaving through crowds of pedestrians with long, ungainly strides. Matt Scott is late. Earlier this morning, he tried to sign up for an organized multi-day trek to an archaeological site in the mountains. But when he turned up at the tourist agency just a few moments ago, he was informed that the last group of the day had already left. If he wanted to catch up, he'd have to hurry. Matt arrives at his budget hostel and hurtles through the lobby. He sprints to his dorm, throws his backpack onto the bed, and starts stuffing everything he'll need for the trek into his day bag.

6:47When it comes to practical footwear, all Matt owns are the Wellington boots he wore during his visit to the Amazon, where wellies are recommended as protection against snakes. Reptile-proof, perhaps, but less than ideal on a mountain trail. That leaves the sandals he's currently wearing. When Matt examines them, however, he notices the strap on the left sandal is worn away. It flaps about, uselessly. Hardly suitable for a six-day hike. He scratches his head. Alright, new plan. Go buy a needle and thread, repair sandals, then head back to the tourist agency to drop off main backpack before taking the bus into the mountains to catch up with a tour group.

7:35Simple. And so, with broken sandals in hand and a bag slung around each shoulder, Matt runs barefoot into the street, scouring the shop fronts for somewhere that might sell sewing supplies I do have a tendency when I go travelling to get myself into trouble I've missed a lot of flights, I mean every time I tell the story it always seems like it's not my fault, but you don't miss like 12 flights without it being your fault at least some of the time Matt lives in Clapham, South London with his mum, dad, brother and sister He finished school last year after achieving the grades to study engineering at Oxford but instead of starting university straight away he decided that he would take a year out It just sort of seemed like a thing that I should do in some sense and I guess I was slightly on autopilot I didn't have any particular cultural connection or reason to go to Latin America beyond the feeling that I should do something between school and university.

8:41Sort of social pressure, like the dumb thing, I think. And so off he went. Things got off to an inauspicious start, to say the least, when Matt missed his outbound flight from Heathrow. It would set the tone for things to come. Over the course of the next seven months, he lurched from calamity to calamity. I ran out of cash. I lost my card and had to get cash sent to me and had huge administrative problems that took months to resolve in Cali. I got strangled and dumped unconscious on a side street in Cusco in Peru. I also completely ran out of money in a place called Leticia. I had to shack up with some homeless people for about two weeks.

9:24I also got kicked out of Colombia and Brazil and kind of Venezuela all for overstaying visas because my executive dysfunction often leaves me in terrible situations. I'm quite used to spending your life rough in the train station or somewhere and kind of living without any reach of comfort to not complain you're at it. Seven months into his travels and Matt's diary reads like a choose-your-own misadventure. Perhaps it's for the best then that his flight home is next week Before he calls his gap year quits, however He is determined to make the most of his final week In the short time he has left The hope is to experience something that he'll remember for all the right reasons Which is precisely why he decided to book himself onto an organized trek to the lost city The remains of a pre-Hispanic citadel nestled in the mountains just north of Santa Marta I think I wanted to go to the lost city in Colombia partially.

10:28A lot of it was so that I could do at least one thing, spend at least one week that would be stress-free, organised, like with guides and paid money to a tour group. Simple, I think I can go on. So I think if anything, I was looking forward to a week without any major mistakes. And after this morning's rocky starts, Matt does get things back on track. He manages to buy a sewing kit to repair his sandals. Then he rushes back to the tourist agency, where one of the employees offers to escort him into the mountains so he can link up with the others. Big sigh of relief. He now sits in the back of a taxi with the man from the agency as they trundle towards Santa Marta bus station.

11:13Through all the ups and downs of this trip, Matt has become pretty good at rolling with the punches. More often than not he manages to land on his feet. Speaking of which, now seems a good time to mend his footwear. He reaches into his backpack and his heart sinks. Of course. After all the effort to buy a sewing kit, he somehow managed to forget his sandals.

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13:38It's noon the following day. Matt trudges uphill through lush, dense jungle. It's hot and humid, and his feet steam inside his Wellington boots. He and the man from the tourist agency made good ground yesterday. They caught up with the rest of the group before nightfall. Matt bade farewell to his personal escort, and now he walks in a party of ten, including the porter and guide. He chats with his fellow tourists as they follow a narrow track through the forest. I was on a tour group with, I think, seven other people when I finally caught them. About half of them were Israelis. All the Israelis wouldn't really talk to anyone else, they just kept themselves to themselves, with the exception of one guy called Erez.

14:26He was the person who got on with the best on the way. Also in that same tour group, there was Matthijs. I remember a guy from Holland who was very geeky and a good chess player. And he could beat me a chess. We had a little chessboard. He could beat me blind. And we had some other people. Riney, a German girl. She was a climber. She'd done paragliding. She told me she was a pro climber. It was just amazing. it. Footwear aside, it seems that things are finally looking up for Matt as he gets to know this eclectic group. With a guide leading the way, all he has to focus on is putting one Wellington boot in front of the other.

15:08The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is a spectacular mountain range which rises abruptly from the Colombian coast and soars to heights of 19 ,000 feet. Located just 40 kilometers from the sea, the range's coastal position sustains its rich biodiversity. Warm trade winds blow across the Caribbean and rise as they encounter the Sierra. The air then cools and condenses into a mist that shrouds the peaks, giving rise to a unique ecosystem called the Cloud Forest. It's a landscape of stunning contrasts. Above the treeline, alpine meadows surround snow-capped summits, while down here, in the foothills, you couldn't be anywhere but the tropics.

15:54A vast, steamy jungle that screeches, howls, and hisses with life. Matt drinks it all in. They're very steep valleys that come down with the jungle sort of cascading out of the side. And because it rains every day, and it's very steep, there's very fast-flowing rivers everywhere. It looks so Indiana-dressed. They hike for three days, wading through rivers, crossing deep gorges, and zigzagging their way up steep, verdant hillsides. Matt becomes well acquainted with his companions, Erez, the talkative Israeli, Dutch chess-whiz Matais, and Reini, the German backpacker. At night, in the campsites along the routes, they play card games and tell stories, sitting out under the stars until it starts to rain, which it often does, forcing them back to their bunks.

16:49On the third day, they ascend a long stone staircase carved into the side of the mountain. Lungs burning, the tourists emerge into an open area where the jungle has been cut back to reveal the remains of an ancient citadel. The Lost City was built around 800 AD by the Tyrona people, an indigenous group who lived and flourished here until the 1500s, when the arrival of gold-thirsty conquistadors brought violence, disease, and death. Today, all that's left of this once thriving civilization is a scattering of earthen terraces connected by a series of walkways chiseled into the hillside. there are these platforms that have been raised and cut out of the surrounding jungle.

17:36And you can see underneath where they've been turrised with these big piles of stones. So they form these concentric rings that are completely flattened. And there would have been, I think, wooden huts there, back when the civilisations were operating, but those were gone. So there's just the earthwork that they had constructed, the stone steps that lead up there.

18:02It's a strange, eerie, fascinating sight, the remnants of this settlement hidden in the depths of the jungle. But it's now quite late in the day, so Matt's group will have to wait until tomorrow for their guided tour. No matter. The lost city has been here for over a thousand years. It'll still be here in the morning. The tourists are taken to a hillside clearing a short distance from the site where two wooden cabins serve as sleeping quarters. Matt goes to the first floor of the second cabin and spreads out his sleeping bag in the hammock nearest the door. Then he heads downstairs to a small courtyard where wreaths of campfire smoke twist in the dusky air.

18:48Dinner is being prepared. There's another tour group staying here and Matt soon finds himself chatting with some new faces. Among them is an English backpacker called Mark. He lived in Brixton, which is quite close to where I grew up in London. So we had a bit more in common. We then had dinner, played some card games, played some wits, and someone lit a candle with a photoshop on lighter. And I thought, oh, that's like the photoshop on lighter I've got.

19:22Matt eyes up the lighter. It certainly looks like his, but more likely someone just owns the same one. His was a cheap freebie he picked up when he bought his disposable camera. They're a dime a dozen in Colombia. At about ten o 'clock, Matt says goodnight to the others and heads up to bed. Aching from the day's strenuous hike, he stretches out on his hammock and is sound asleep within minutes.

19:58It's a few hours later, just after 4am. Matt wakes to the sound of raised voices inside the cabin. His Spanish is pretty good, but in his groggy haze he can't make out what's being said. Then, a sharp prod to the ribs snaps him fully awake. He rolls over, blinking up at a man pointing a gun straight at him. I think your brain sort of snaps into survival mode and you try and work out what's going on. I immediately, I think, assumed that we were being robbed, which would not have been a huge surprise to me. I also, I think, determined basically instantly that this was not a good situation. Matt sits up in his hammock, his heart thumping.

20:51Across the room, a second gunman is barking orders at the other tourists. The first intruder gruffly asks Matt what his nationality is. He tells the truth. He's English. The gunman then motions for Matt and the others to get out of bed and go downstairs, taking their belongings with them. Silently, exchanging wide-eyed glances, the shocked tourists follow orders. When I got downstairs on the first floor I saw something that was slightly worrying They were tying up our guides like hands together, feet together and then they were instructed with a bruschetta they were pointed to lie down on these mattresses and then they tied their hands to their feet behind their backs Matt hurries past the trussed up guides and exits the cabin Outside, he's met by an even more disturbing scene So, I'd only seen up to this point The two armed men who'd woken up Last round of nationality I now saw another 20 And that was the moment Where I was dramatically recalibrating What was going on Thinking, well, this is a much bigger operation Than I had originally anticipated Surrounded by 20 men All, I should say, armed with some kind of assault rifle At that point Sometimes things had already gone very wrong.

22:45Great, now we're talking. Book it. Booked. One mile down, 19 to go. Bring it on. You've got options. Download the ZocDoc app today. This July on the Noiser Podcast Network. Founding Fathers, an American dream continues. July the 4th marks 250 years of the United States. Join Clark Peters for a deep dive into the country's origins. On Real Dictators, the story of Marshall Tito concludes as currents of global history converge on the Balkans. On Real Survival Stories, we're on board a light aircraft over Canada, following a couple on the holiday of a lifetime, and watching on as an avalanche consumes a goldmine.

23:26On Short History Off, we'll delve into the amazing stories of the Brink's Mat gold robbery and the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. And in Sherlock Holmes' short stories, Holmes sets out on a search for a missing pupil in The Adventure of the Priory School. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.

23:54It's almost 5am on September the 12th, 2003. In the mountains of Northern Columbia, a group of bleary-eyed tourists stand in a jungle clearing, clutching backpacks and lacing up shoes in the chilly pre-dawn light. Surrounding them are around 20 armed men. 19-year-old Matt Scott stands next to another English backpacker, Mark. The two Brits quietly confer, trading theories about who these men might be and what they might want. They are all in uniform, army camo and black flak jackets with assault rifles slung over their shoulders. Obviously, this is more than just a robbery. You don't need 20 armed men to steal a few wallets.

24:42So then, what? Matt and Mark look at each other. There is one possible explanation, staring them in the face.

24:57Colombia has a long and troubled history with ransom kidnappings. Since the 1970s, the rise in civilian hostage cases has reflected the growing strength of paramilitary groups across the country. In the year 2000 alone, more than 3 ,000 kidnappings were reported. Since then, a government crackdown has significantly reduced that number. And while some parts of Colombia remain off-limits to tourists, this mountain range isn't one of them. At least that's what the guidebooks say. But as Matt stands there, warily eyeing the ring of gun-toting guards, the outlandish idea that they're being kidnapped gradually starts to feel more plausible.

25:43Finally, after a few minutes, one of the men steps forward to address the bewildered tourists. We did get a story from them at this stage. They said that they were the Colombian army and they were there to help us because there were reports of bandits in the valley and so we were marching back to Santa Marta across different paths because the area was no longer safe. The story seems dubious. Why would the army wake them up in the middle of the night? Why would they tie up their tour guides? But right now, facing up to reality is too strange and frightening a prospect. There's a lot of denial that goes on because, you know, you just don't really think, oh, I've been kidnapped.

26:32It's just not a thing that really happens in the real world. People come along and say, oh, we're from the government. We're here to take you. So I was certainly prepared to hear them out on this. The soldiers start selecting individuals from the group. They make the tourists walk forward one at a time and then gesture either left or right with a blade of a machete. We were separated into two groups. I now know that they were people they wanted and people they didn't want. And I was put into the group of people they wanted. They didn't want couples. They didn't want the drama. They didn't want older people.

27:10They didn't want people who didn't have good footwear. So they needed people who could walk and walk hard and not complain about it.

27:21Matt is selected along with fellow Brit Mark, Erez the Israeli, Raine the young German, a Spanish man called Baez, and three more Israeli backpackers. This group of eight is then instructed to start walking down the hill into the next valley.