Real Survival Stories - Marooned on an Island: Watch Out for Dragons…

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

A leisurely scuba dive in Indonesia goes sideways when the group is caught in a fierce current. Swept out to sea, Jim Manning and his fellow castaways must find land urgently. But even if they make it ashore, what awaits them on terra firma may pose an even greater danger… A Noiser production, written by Joe Viner. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn Ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's b-o-b at l-i-b-s-y-n dot com. It's 9pm on June 5th, 2008. Indonesia. Underneath a vast starlit sky, the waters of the Flores Sea are tumultuous. Fierce currents swirl and split the swell.

Amidst the rolling waves bobs a lone piece of driftwood, a tree trunk six feet in length. Occasionally it gets dragged under before being spat back out. Clinging to it are five terrified human beings, drenched and shivering in their wetsuits. Among them, 30-year-old Briton Jim Manning and his girlfriend Charlotte. Jim looks around at the faces of his companions. Pale moonlight shimmers in their panicked eyes as they hold on for dear life. It did get rougher, the waves did get bigger, the wind picked up and the waves were crashing over our heads and I remember being really cold as well, like starting to get really

cold at this point. Jim tightens his grip. He scans the darkness for a light of any kind, for a boat or better yet, a coastline. He knows that they're being swept between the islets and atolls that populate this narrow sea channel. But the current is pulling them south, out beyond the islands, towards the open ocean. So I was thinking, we want to be on land at some point soon. We don't want to be drifting out into the Indian Ocean. Our situation is just going to get worse and worse. The longer you're in the ocean drifting, the worse it gets. For me, it was always like, get to land. The objective is simple enough, but trapped in this current, driven by the wind and the waves,

finding land is easier said than done. All they can do for now is hold onto their log, keep their eyes peeled, and pray the conditions relent. Ever 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. In this episode, we meet scuba instructor Jim Manning.

In June 2008, he and his girlfriend Charlotte are on their travels in Indonesia. The trip is everything they hoped it would be, a spectacular underwater safari. But when a calamitous breakdown in communications sees them cast adrift, the marine paradise threatens to become a watery grave. And even if they can make it to an island, there's no guarantee that what awaits them on dry land will be any better than at sea. Do I go back the way I've just come and tell the group that I've failed,

which in my mind, you know, Green Beret mindset, isn't an option, like we don't fail. I was screaming and shouting and, you know, shouting myself hoarse, you know, Green Beret mindset isn't an option. Like, we don't fail. I was screaming and shouting and, you know, shouting myself hoarse, you know, but knowing that they're not going to hear me and why am I shouting? But I've got to do something. I'm John Hopkins from Noisa. This is Real Survival Stories. It's 3pm on June 5th, 2008, the Flores Sea. Five scuba divers glide effortlessly beneath the waves.

With an elegant swish of his flippers, Jim Manning swoops lower until his dive mask is just a few inches above the reef. Seahorses flit between tendrils of grass. Bright orange clownfish poke their heads from holes in the luminous pink coral. Jim glances across at the diver swimming next to him. He sees the delight in her eyes, mirroring his own. Exploring this spectacular reef is one thing, but to be sharing the experience with the love of his life,

it doesn't get much better. Jim and his girlfriend Charlotte live a life of freedom and spontaneity. It's a world away from Jim's previous regimented, disciplined existence as a commander in the British Armed Forces. Joined the military at the age of 18, purely because I wasn't really sure what else to do with my life. In basic training, I was very fit. They recognised I was very fit, so a couple of instructors recommended I try the commando course. Didn't know much about it, but just heard it was like an elite forces unit, so I said, yeah, I I'm a bit of that. Jim did tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. On periods of leave he'd go backpacking around Southeast Asia

which is how he met Charlotte five years ago. When we met she was free spirit she was really into traveling the world she wasn't keen on settling into anything too serious at that point in her life so yeah we hit it off. Although I was in the military, I was a very chilled out kind of personality. And my passion was going diving and travelling. So I love backpacking, love meeting people. She was the same. We're both quite outgoing. Yeah, so it was a natural hookup, really.

In 2006, after a decade of military service, Jim received his discharge papers. He and Shah packed their bags and jumped on the next plane to Thailand. They'd been there for the past two years, working as scuba diver instructors. We stumbled across a dive school in Koh Phi Phi in Thailand. And then we used that as our base. We'd work and we'd go diving, traveling and diving. So we would then go diving around the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, New Zealand, anywhere and everywhere we could. Australia, you know, just go back to work, work as divers, go traveling as divers.

And that was the cycle. Aged 30 and 25, Jim and Shah are in no rush to return to the UK. That's how they find themselves here in Indonesia on one of their regular excursions. They've been exploring the flora and fauna of Komodo National Park, a group of islands that boasts an incredible array of wildlife. Most famously, the park is home to the world's largest and most dangerous lizard, the Komodo dragon. They're amazing creatures. They're like 10, 12 feet. The biggest ones. I've got some great pictures of them actually. And yeah, massive, massive animals. They're like a pit bull terror

of the lizard world. Like they walk with like big shoulders and they walk quite slowly and deliberate. They got huge, huge feet and claws. And then they got a really long, thick tail. Really powerful looking beast. Yeah, they are big, big animals. With their huge jaws and toxic saliva, one bite from these ancient carnivores can be fatal.

Sadly, they are an endangered species. Today they are found on just two islands, Komodo and Rinca. But Jim and Shah haven't come to Indonesia to explore the world above the water. Not primarily, at least. What interests them most is what lies beneath. They've signed up for a week-long diving expedition along the park's tropical reefs. The Flores Sea boasts some of the most spectacular dive sites in the world. I love being down there with the fish and seeing them in their natural environment.

I love the peacefulness of diving. You're not talking. You're just, you're communicating with hand signals and your eyes. I just love the feeling of weightlessness on the water. I love the feeling of getting, of sharing that with people that hadn't experienced. When you see someone who's never done it before, you see their eyes, how wide they get when they see their first fish on the water or that especially when they see their first shark and stuff like that just yeah just love it on this occasion jim and sha are tourists

not instructors they can make the most of being free of responsibility they're part of an experienced dive group one of two in the water today. And they're going drift diving. This means actively seeking out the strongest currents. The divers will then use these currents to travel underwater across the coral reefs. Of course, it's hard to predict exactly where they will surface. All the support boat can do is estimate and hope they haven't drifted too far off course. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads.

Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com. It's 4pm when the five divers in Jim's group return to the surface. As planned, they emerge a short distance from the shoreline of a small island. He and Char paddle their way over to the instructor, fellow Brit 50-year-old Kath Mitchinson. The other two tourists, a Frenchman named Laurent and a Swedish woman, Helena, do the same. They congregate, bobbing in the water, and peer around for the dive boat. It's less than 100 feet away, but it's just heading off on a loop around the island, presumably checking on the other group. They're not concerned.

It's quite normal to have to wait 10 or 20 minutes after surfacing, and they take precautions to make sure they remain visible. Calmly, the divers inflate a surface marker buoy, a bright orange cylinder that stands six feet out of the water. After 10 minutes, the current has pulled them a fair way from the island. When they see the boat return, they shout and blow their whistles. But it doesn't seem to notice them. Instead, it heads off on another lap of the island. Another ten minutes pass.

Then another. After half an hour, the divers have drifted over two kilometres south. Jim feels a twinge of unease. The dive boat did like a lap of the island where we'd surfaced and hadn't seen us, so they must have assumed that we were underwater or something. And the dive boat did like a lap or a couple of loops around the island. It was a small island that we'd been diving. It'd done a couple of loops and still not, and not been heading in our direction. So I'm starting to get concerned now that it's not, because it's not

drifting with us, it doesn't know that we're not at the island anymore, you know? So I'm starting to think, hang on a minute, we're getting quite small now in terms of like a person looking for you, you're going to be quite a small target to look for on the surface of the water the minutes ticked by the boat still hasn't spotted them something is wrong and then around 5 p.m. maybe an hour and a half since they surfaced, the tiring divers are shocked into silent horror. A puff of smoke rises from the vessel's exhaust as it turns 180 degrees and speeds away. Around this time, we could see the dive boat now going away from the island.

So the dive boats obviously made a decision that they can't find us and started heading back to the mainland, back to Flores, back to the harbour effectively, which is, I think from memory, was about a two and a half hour boat ride. It's clear why the captain has departed. It's getting late and he'll be running out of fuel. But this brings little solace to those left behind. Jim, Shah, and the others have been abandoned.

As the dive boat vanishes over the horizon, Jim tilts his gaze towards the setting sun. We realised it was serious probably about half an hour before it got dark. So the point where we saw the dive boat going in the other direction, we knew obviously it's going to be dark soon. So I think people were starting to get quite panicked. The divers are also getting separated. They're drifting in different directions.

Even Kath, the instructor, is struggling to focus. Leaning on his military training, Jim is able to remain calm. First, he turns to check on Charlotte. She's tearful and short of breath. Char had a, what of a better word, a bit of a kind of a meltdown panic attack, really. She was really hysterical. She started crying really loudly.

She was really upset. So I said to her, look, you know, you've got to snap out of this, basically, because there's nothing we can do. You know, crying isn't going to help. There's nothing we can do to help ourselves except swim and try and get to some kind of land. So we can't, you know, don't waste energy crying. Don't waste any emotional energy crying.

She snapped out of it and she was nothing but positive and determined from that point on to kind of do what we had to do, which was save ourselves effectively. But when they rejoin the group, they find the other three in similar states of distress. Kath is overcome with guilt, blaming herself and apologising profusely. Laurent is angry, berating the dive centre for allowing this to happen.

Helena, meanwhile, is just mute with shock. The troops need rallying. First, though, Jim grabs his carabiners and clips the castaways together to prevent them from floating apart again. Then he lays out a plan. This stretch of water is filled with tiny islands and rocky outcrops. Rather than waiting for rescue, they need to get themselves to land. I just literally was like, there's one thing we got to do.

Nothing else matters. Like all these emotions that everyone's feeling, because I'm scared, you know, just like everyone else. But we got to park all that now and we got to focus on swimming. Swimming to land get into safety nothing else matters and that was me that was my mindset but caught as they are in powerful currents that's no easy task when dry land does appear the castaways swim with all their might before they know it they're swept past the island. Over the next few hours, this happens again and again.

It's now past 7pm, and the sun has set. The divers tread water together. They're kept afloat by their buoyancy vests. But still, keeping their heads above water takes constant effort. In a second now, it will be completely dark. Suddenly, Char speaks up. She's spotted something in the water, a large piece of driftwood.

Char shouted, oh my God, there's a shark there. And it wasn't. And then I said, no, no, no, that's a log, that's a log. We were already clipped together as a group of five, so we grabbed this log and literally pulled it into the circle and then hooked our arms over the top of it. And obviously I had all the straps going over the top of it, so we were kind of held together now.

Char and I were one side of the log. Kath was like the other side with Lauren, and Helena was like to my right-hand side. The castaways have been thrown a lifeline. Relief is on all their faces. After the initial flurry of panic and recrimination, the group mentality is strengthened. They are unified.

But with the current still pulling them southwards, they're all thinking the same thing. What on earth happens now? It's almost 9pm. Five hours since Jim and the others surfaced from the dive. And they are still drifting. Heading south at their current speed, by daybreak they will be out in the open ocean. There, it will be even harder to find.

There's also the increased risk of drowning, exposure to the elements, not to mention what lurks beneath the waves. Internally, I was terrified. I was thinking, we're going to be in the Indian Ocean tomorrow morning and there's going to be tiger sharks and stuff visiting to see what we are because they would be able to smell all the urine in your wetsuits and stuff do you know what I mean so they're going to come and visit you and they circle you sharks to check you out from a distance and then they get closer and closer and then they bump into you to see if you're soft or hard and if you're soft they go oh I'm going to take a bite of this and see what it is. but as the night deepens a more immediate problem presents itself

after six hours in the water the castaways are freezing cold the water temperature is about 27 degrees and our body temperature is about 35 36 you know you want to be about 36 isn't it 37 degrees is where you want to be i think from memory so we're like way below what you're you know 10 degrees below what you should be and if you're in that long enough it you start to shiver so yeah we were people were being sick and people had cramps and water was washing over the top of our heads all the time the wind drives massive waves over them. Resurfacing, Jim glances at the glowing numbers of his watch. It's 10 p.m.

Two hours later, they're all exhausted and badly dehydrated. They drift past what must be Komodo Island, the last major landmass before they hit the open ocean. The current has now weakened, though it won't be long until it returns. Then Jim sees it. A dark silhouette, a lumpy mass rising from the water. Another island.

It's hard to tell how far away it is, but it could be their last chance. I mean, we were all absolutely knackered at this point and really, really cold. And I remember like kind of like saying, well, this is it. The tide's gone slack, so we can swim. You can actually make an effort. You can kick and actually move in a direction now. So we said, look, let's go for it. Like, like this is our chance let's try and swim to that that island the five divers kick their fins pushing the log towards land as they inch closer large rocks and steep cliff faces take shape along the shore

when they're within 30 or 40 meters they spot a possible landing site eventually we kind of found a patch that was lighter than the other patches of lands and we kind of chatted that could be a beach or or an area we could try and land at this point we kind of made a decision um that calf and I would break away from the log. Nobody wanted us to do this. Like, yeah, this is where people, no, no, don't leave, don't leave. This is not a good idea.

But we're like, look, we know we've got a window here of another hour or so before the currents come back in. Let's make a break for it. Kath and I will go and check it out. We'll see if we can get to the shore, basically. Jim lets go of the driftwood

and plunges headlong through the water. As he thrashes towards land, the waves seed at the shoreline. His body rolls, arms flailing, as he tries to orientate himself. He feels jagged rock beneath his wetsuit, cutting into his skin. Then, one last crash. His feet meet solid ground.

He staggers upright, stumbling on the sharp stones. He calls out to the others, waving his arms. He urges them to follow. Moments later, his four fellow castaways are also washed ashore. They've made it. Jim and Shah throw their arms around each other, giddy with joy. If there was champagne, I'd have been drinking champagne. We've just spent 11, 12, I can't remember, 11 hours in the ocean, not knowing if we'd ever see land again

and not knowing if we're going to be eaten by sharks. And now we're on hard land. Yeah, I'm smiling. I'm celebrating. And we're like, we will survive this. Like, that was the mindset. For me, personally, I'm like, we're safe now because, okay, I don't know where we are. I don't know how long we're going to be here. But in my mind, I'm thinking if need be, I could be here for weeks. I can figure this out, you know, like we'll be okay. Like we can,

we can hunt food. We can, we can find water. We can forage and blah, blah, blah. We'll be okay. Like, we can hunt food, we can find water, we can forage and blah, blah, blah. We'll be okay. So, yeah, we were over the moon. Dive instructor Kath believes they've washed up on the island of Padar. It's a remote, jungle-covered outcrop, six square miles in size. It's the smallest of the three main islands that make up Komodo National Park. Though uninhabited, Pada is frequented by local fishermen.

It's also, mercifully, the only isle of the three that is free of Komodo dragons. Kath assures the group that tomorrow morning they'll find a fishing boat. Right now, though, they need to rest. Jim and Shah remove their dive gear and settle down on the rocky shoreline. Not exactly a comfortable bed, but dry land nonetheless. A few hours later, the sun comes up. In the cold morning light, their surroundings are rather less appealing. Their small cove is hemmed in by steep cliffs and surrounded by dense jungle. I think it was a bit more solemn in the morning because it's now been a good 12 hours really,

since we've gone missing, well more than 12 hours. So I think it was about 5am after an uncomfortable broken night's sleep we we're on the rocks and we're sort of you know chatting about what we're going to do really and making the decision from there but i mean we're still you know on an island in the middle of nowhere effectively and and yes people do get you know fishermen come by and other dive boats come by but there was no guarantee it's decided that jim and kath will head inland in search of help the rest will stay behind on the beach keeping an eye out for passing ships after saying goodbye to shah and the others the two explorers set off

well i mean it's literally like sheer jungle cliffs there's a very, very steep hills and then sheer cliffs around. So you've got like little bay almost, a stony beach. And then it was like curved out towards the sea and then you had sheer cliff faces of like 200 feet.

And then at the back of the beach you had a very, very steep hill which was extremely dense jungle. So that's where Kath and I went. In their vests, swimming shorts and thin rubber dive shoes, the two Brits

pick their way through the foliage. Before long, they're confronted with a series of vertical rock faces. They'll have to climb. After a while, Jim urges Kath to turn back. It's a dangerous route. And while he is an experienced climber, she is struggling. So Kath disagreed. She's like, I'm not going back and telling Charlotte, you know, I've left you to go on your own. I said, look,

she'll understand. I can do this. I know I can do this. I've done this kind of training my entire life. I'm going to go. You go back, stay with them, keep them happy, and so on and so forth. So that's how we agreed. And like I said, she reluctantly agreed to it and off I went. Kath suggests that if Jim can make it to the large bay on the other side of the island, that's where he'll most likely find fishing boats. It should take about a day to get there on foot. Jim plows on. Nearing the top of another climb,

the hot sun beats down on his back. He reaches for a handhold and pulls himself up. But gets a nasty surprise. It was on a climbing section, so I put my hands on the top, and as I pulled myself up, I was literally about three or four foot away from this snake, and it kind of looked at me,

and then just disappeared back into the bush behind it. So I was like, God, that was lucky. That was in my head. I was thinking, if I'd put my hand over the top and grabbed this thing, it probably would have bitten me. Jim proceeds with caution now, on the lookout for other dangerous wildlife.

So I was just like, right, make lots of noise when I'm in the jungle. So I was kind of singing to myself, and I was rustling bushes. Because I just thought, I want animals to hear me coming, and that will startle them, and they'll move out my way, you know, rather than me put my hand on one or step on one, and it bite me.

So that was my mindset. He can't afford to get hurt. The others are relying on him. Obviously, I was worried about them the whole time. But I was kind of thinking, again, like I try to always keep a positive mindset. So I was thinking, right, what can I do? I'm going to rescue them. You know, that was in my head.

My mission, get help, rescue them. Raise the alarm, you know, rescue them. That's it. That's what I'm thinking the whole time. It's mid-morning on Friday, five hours since Jim set off to find help. Back on the beach, the four other castaways busy

themselves at the makeshift camp. Laurent scans the horizon for boats, while Kath and Char collect sticks to build a fire. Helena lies curled up on the rocks, sleeping. Five wetsuits are spread out nearby, drying in the hot sun. Then, from the clump of jungle that spills onto the beach, they hear movement. Branches snap, hanging vines twitch, and a massive black lizard comes slinking from the undergrowth. Its long, forked tongue flicks out, tasting the air. Kath and Char are the first to see it. Gloopy strands of toxic saliva hang, quivering from the Komodo dragon's colossal jaws. In addition to the imminent threat this reptile

poses, its appearance also confirms something. Kath was mistaken. They're not on the island of Padar, after all. Padar doesn't have Komodos. They must be on the island of Rinka instead. The terrified humans grab anything they can to defend themselves. Sticks, weighted diving belts. But the dragon keeps lumbering towards them, its large tail swishing, its rounded snout pressed to the ground in preparation for an attack. On the other side of the island, Jim finally emerges from the jungle. He is of course completely unaware that he is on Rinka and not Padar. He stands at the top of a cliff and scans the coastline.

You can't understand it. There's no sign of the bay that Kath described. Jim is soaked in sweat and feeling lightheaded. The heat is taking its toll. I was really, really thirsty. This is the thing that I was finding the most difficult, was the feeling of intense thirst. Like, oh my God, I can't tell anyone. I would never want to experience that again. Like, I haven't drunk any water at this point for, you know, 15, 16 hours, and I'm walking now in heat, humidity, and jungle, and I'm working really hard walking and climbing. So I was thirsty, like I couldn't tell you how thirsty I was. From the top of this vertical cliff face, it's maybe 200 or 300 feet to the sandy cove below.

But with thick jungle behind him, his only option is to climb down and then keep making his way along the coastline. And I was like right now i've got to make a decision do i go back the way i've just come and tell the group that i failed which in my mind you know green beret mindset isn't an option like we don't fail this is like kind of my head at this point in my life i'm like failure's not an option for me like not gonna do that or do i climb down the problem was i'm sat on top of this cliff it's literally 200 foot

of sheer rock face to get down jim keeps his torso pressed close to the rock his feet search for footholds as he inches down the cliff. Eventually, miraculously, he reaches the bottom in one piece. He rushes to the nearest rock pool and plunges his face in it. He takes a mouthful of seawater and spits it back out. It does nothing for his raging thirst. After resting for a moment, Jim wades into the sea and carefully begins navigating the rocks. I literally just kind of got myself washed around the island. The only thing that scared

me was being washed back out to sea. So I was like staying as close to the rocks as I could and I was getting battered sometimes, but I thought the odd cut and bruise against the rocks is far better than being out of sea. So that's how I did it. For the next six hours I kind of navigated my way around this island as close to it as I could, you know, like jumping from rock to rock and using waves and water and that's how I got around the island. sundown on friday jim is utterly exhausted he's been traversing the island for over 12 hours but then as he emerges from the water a wave of relief washes over him he slumps down on the sand. Stretching ahead is a long, crescent bay. It looks exactly as Kath described it.

It was like a huge bay. It went round in a massive C-shape, and I'm talking, you know, a couple of kilometres, and it was on, there was sandy beach as well, and in the middle of the bay was a massive rock, outcrop of rocks, so that was exactly what Kath had said I needed to find. But there are no fishing boats to be seen he guesses they must have all headed back for the day all he can do for now

is settle down for another night on the beach of course this is not the bay that kath described and there are no fishermen coming in the morning. He is, in fact, stranded on the wrong island, with over a thousand wild Komodo dragons on the loose. It's 5 a.m. on Saturday. Jim's eyes crack open to reveal a dawn sky streaked with pink clouds. Heaving himself upright, he stares out to sea, not a boat in sight. He staggers to his feet and makes his way across the seaweed-slick rocks. This is his mission for the day, to sit here and flag down the first fisherman he sees.

As the morning goes on, he does occasionally spot the tiny specks of boats in the distance. They're probably ferrying tourists around the national park. But despite his best efforts, none of them notice him. I've now perched myself on this big, of sticky out bit of rock in the bay. And I'm like in a position where I could see out to sea. And I saw boats crossing far out, you know, a few kilometers out. I shouted and waved all morning, but nobody could see me. The sun rises higher in the sky.

I was frustrated and I was angry because I was waving at boats that couldn't see me and nothing I could do. That was making me really angry and I was screaming and shouting and shouting myself hoarse, but knowing that they're not going to hear me and why am I shouting? I've got to do something, so you do something. I could feel my head burning the whole day, but I just stayed out there. I was like, I'm going to raise the alarm. This is what I'm going to do, you know. I wasn't going to move now. The hours crawl past. But then, Jim spots another boat. Unlike the others, this one isn't flitting across the horizon.

It's coming towards the island. Soon, he can hear the drone of its motor. It rounds the headland at the other end of the bay, about a kilometer away. Jim leaps to his feet. I stayed on my rocky outcrop, and about midday, a speedboat came around the corner, and I was waving and shouting.

I could see this speedboat was looking for people. It was like, it was nipping in and out, like nooks and crannies, so to speak, and the rock faces. And then it got close enough and people started waving at me and I started waving at them, you know, and then it changed direction and came towards me. And I mean, I was, yeah, I was celebrating now. Jim makes out the figures on board. Two people are positioned near the prow waving frantically. He squints and shades his eyes. It can't be. The blonde hair flowing in the wind, the wide toothy grin. It's Shah. Jim leaps into the water and swims for the boat. He clambers on board with tears in his eyes.

Every good moment, yeah, everything you're excited about in life, everything that makes you happy, all rolled into one. Like, you know what I mean? Yeah, you're jumping for joy, like, over the moon, saved, you know? Like, yeah, massive, massive moment, like, massive, massive moment. And just hugging everyone on the boat like all crying crying tears of joy they gave me a bottle of water it was the best thing i've ever tasted the boat turns and heads for floris as they speed over the waves jim finally learns from shah that they were on rinka all this time, not Padar Island as they'd first thought. He discovers that a massive search and rescue operation has been in full swing for the last two days. Salvation finally came when a passing vessel spotted the group on the beach.

The four castaways had laid out their orange buoyancy aids in the shape of a cross. Jim also learns about the group's close encounter with the local wildlife. When the Komodo first appeared, Kath and Char managed to scare it off by yelling and throwing stones. But when the second one arrived, it was the withdrawn Helena who rose to the challenge. They heard Helena screaming really loud and they all sort of startled them. They looked at Helena and she was hitting a Komodo dragon in the head with a massive boulder. So another dragon had come out of the jungle. She was asleep and her wetsuit hood was like literally beside her head.

And it had her wetsuit hood in its mouth. And she woke up and obviously it startled her. And she grabbed a rock beside her. And apparently this rock was like massive, picked it up and smashed this dragon in the head with this rock and it ran off. As the Komodos retreated, Kath had been devastated to realize she'd misdiagnosed their location. Once they realized where we were, Kath was like, he's gone into the jungle and like there's thousands of these, you know, I think there's

two and a half thousand on the island and they're everywhere, you know, it's not a big island so there's a lot of Komodo dragons to a small space of land so they were really worried about me. But that's all behind them now and it was an easy mistake to make. Jim and Shah return to land and are reunited with the others. Then they spend the next few days recovering at Kath's home on Flores. We were really, really happy for days, days afterwards. Like, when you survive something like that, you are really, really happy. Next, Jim and Shah decide to return to England to spend some time with their families. But it's not long before the adventurous couple

are back on a plane to Thailand for the summer diving season. After all, life's too short for what-ifs. We went back a few months later and we worked another season in Thailand teaching diving. You know, get back on the bike, like, life's too short. Make the most of opportunities in life, you know. You just don't know if tomorrow is going to be the day you die somehow. So just seize the day, you know. Today, nearly 16 years after the incident, Jim and Shah are still together.

They're married with two children. When Jim looks back on their ordeal in Indonesia, his outlook remains upbeat. It's nothing but positive. Like, I live my life more positively than I did before, and I was positive before that happened, so I'm more positive now than I was then. Nothing but good things have come out of this, you know? So, yeah, there's lots of things could have happened,

lots of horrific scenarios, but none of them did. Here I am today with nothing but good memories and life experience that I can pass on to my children in a way and hopefully give them a positive outlook on life. You know? In the next episode, we meet nature lover and keen hiker Greg Hine. During a solo multi-day trek in Kings Canyon National Park, an accident leaves him seriously hurt and stranded on the slopes of Mount Goddard. Things only get worse as he tumbles, feet first, down the mountainside.

Even if he manages to halt his descent, with a serious fracture in his leg, Greg's prospects are bleak. This deep in the wilderness, he's totally on his own. But he won't give up easily. That's next time on Real Survival Stories.