Her teenage years were a wild
adventure, living in the Amazon with her scientist parents who taught
her everything they could about the jungle.

What Peruvian schoolgirl Julianne Koepcke could not know was that these survival lessons were to save her life. 

When
she was just 17, on Christmas Eve  1971, she was involved in a horrific
plane crash that killed her mother and everyone else on the plane.

Julianne,
now 58, fell 10,000ft, still strapped in her seat. She then walked and
swam for 11 days through the heart of the Amazon until she was
eventually found.

Here
she tells her extraordinary story in her own words. The full article
appears in the October issue of Reader’s Digest, in shops tomorrow.

My
days in Lima are wonderful. Despite my jungle experience, I am a
schoolgirl. I spend my vacations in Panguana and my school days with
classmates in Lima. My mother prefers to fly to Pucallpa earlier, but a
school dance and my high school graduation ceremony are on December 22
and 23 respectively.

I beg my mother to let me attend.

'All right,' she said. 'We’ll fly on the 24th.'

Plain Truth Editor's note: It was later discovered that as many as 14 other passengers also
survived the initial fall from the disintegrated plane but were unable
to seek help and died while awaiting rescue.