Out of Captivity : Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle

314 OUT OF CAPTIVITYEven in our sleep-deprived state, it didn’t take long for us to realizethat we had been relocated to a camp with other hostages. When I firstsaw one of their faces I was both excited and sad. I was happy to seesome of the military guys who’d been separated from us during theforty-day march after Caribe. Armando Castellanos was one of the firstto spot me and he was literally jumping up and down. He was alwaysa really emotional guy, and he started crying and put his arms aroundme. When I hugged him back, I thought I had my arms around a bagof brooms. Armando had always been a fit guy, but he had gotten verythin. He told me he had hepatitis, and though his skin didn’t show anysigns of it, he was almost unrecognizable. Despite his physical condition,he was the same upbeat, positive guy.As was always the case during our captivity, this was a good-news/bad-news deal. On the one hand, I was pleased to see their familiarfaces; on the other, it was devastating that these eight military prisonerswere still in captivity. All of them had been in custody years longerthan we had. In the time since the forty-day march, we had speculatedendlessly about what happened to everyone. We’d also wondered a lotof times about when we might get put back into a group of other prisoners.The eight of them seemed thrilled to see us, too, and our littlereunion was a mix of handshakes, pats on the back, questions and answers,and a rush of excited chatter. Making things even better was thefact that we were going to be mixed in with a group of military andpolice guys. Based on our time in the political camp, I knew they conductedthemselves the way that I wanted to handle my captivity.Once I got through greeting the eight of them, I saw two more peoplestanding there—Ingrid and Lucho. Life had not been easy on anyof us for the last two years and it showed in all of our faces, our eyes,and in the way we carried ourselves. Ingrid and Lucho seemed as diminishedphysically as the rest of us, but it was their attitudes that hadchanged the most. They were genuinely glad to see us and their warmgreeting was in stark contrast to their behavior when they’d first seen