Found after five-year walk
Canadian with mental-health issues discovered 10,000km away
ACanadian man who was missing for five years has been found more than 10,460km away in the Amazon jungle. Anton Pilipa trekked across two continents, walking mostly barefoot with just the clothes on his back, after he disappeared from his Vancouver home in 2012.
His family spent years desperately searching for the former humanitarian worker, who suffers from suspected schizophrenia, and had almost given up hope when they got a call out of the blue.
A Canadian-born Brazilian policewoman spotted Pilipa, who she initially mistook for a beggar, shuffling down a dirt track in bare feet, and dirty Bermuda shorts and a vest. He had no passport and was without any form of identification.
With the help of several international agencies and embassies, she was able to track down his family who flew down to be reunited with him.
“I was stunned,” Anton’s brother Stefan Pilipa told the Daily Mail. “I told myself that he was dead. Because that was the only thing I could come up with that explained his absence.
“But in my heart of hearts, I didn’t think he could be.”
Anton, who has been put back on his schizophrenia medication, travelled through at least 10 countries from Canada, including the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil — all without a passport and with little more than the clothes on his back. He kept mainly to himself and still speaks almost no Spanish or Portuguese.
His brother said he had one bizarre mission; to get to the National Library of Buenos Aires in Argentina.
Tragically, when he finally made it to the library, after walking thousands of miles, he was turned away because he didn’t have any identification. So he turned around and began his trek into Brazil where he would eventually be found.
He described how he survived by picking fruits and berries, scrounging for food and clothes in the trash, and relying on the generosity of strangers.
But that’s not to say times weren’t tough. Anton started off with a small bag of belongings but was robbed of what little he did have on several occasions.
While through
It’s been a lot of thinking for years, sleeping in the open. It’s very simple to live, we do not need many things. Anton Pilipa
walking 800km alone the dangerous Amazon jungle, filled with poisonous spiders, snakes, caiman — which can grow up to 6m long — and jaguar, all his toenails dropped off.
Yet, while he met some “bad people” on his 16,000km journey, he said he had “received more generosity, especially in recent times”. “I’ve never felt alone,” he said. “It’s been a lot of thinking for years, sleeping in the open. It’s very simple to live, we do not need many things.”
Anton, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, had worked all over Canada for humanitarian relief organisations.
In 2011, he finally began treatment for his mental illness but that same year he was involved in an incident which resulted in him being charged with assault and weapons offences.
He fled the country in 2012 before he was due to appear in court.
Stefan, who flew to Manaus last month to collect Anton, said his brother’s health was starting to deteriorate in the Brazilian mental institute where he was being held waiting for his family to collect him. “We got him just in time.” “I know that I am very lucky to be alive,” Anton told the BBC. “I am very happy to be able to return to my family.”