It is an incredible story of survival and a tragic tale of getting there too late. It concerns an 18-year-old from Brazil named Jonathan dos Santos Alves, who spent a harrowing and almost unbelievable 42 days lost in the Amazon rain forest, only to finally be found - and die in his father's arms minutes later.

Dos Santos Alves's story began in the middle of May, when he and two friends embarked on what they thought would be a simple hunting trip together not far from the city of Manaus. At some point, Jonathan became separated from his pals and the heavily forested interior became a maze that quickly turned into a prison.

It appears the more he tried to find his way out, the more lost he became. When he didn't return, his family and officials launched an all out search for him that turned up nothing. After a month of looking, authorities gave up their hunt - but not the boy's father.

Edilson dos Santos was determined to discover one way or the other what happened to his son. So he recruited his brother and two other men to crunch through the unforgiving dense brush and continue the search. For 12 long days, they shouted his name, scoured the ground and desperately looked for any sign of his trail.

And then on Saturday, in what seemed like a miracle, they finally spotted the boy. He was badly dehydrated and lying next to a supply of water - a river that ran through the area. He had lost much of his body weight and was covered by insect bites.

He was still alive when his father finally found him. But sadly, he didn't make it in time.

"I held him in my arms and got the insects away from his mouth," his 40-year-old father told a Sao Paulo newspaper. "When I tried to revive him, he gritted his teeth and died."

Jonathan had wandered some 45 kilometres from where he was last seen. In one final agonizing act, his father was forced to leave his son behind and get help. He placed the boy's body in a tree so animals wouldn't get to it, marked the spot and had recovery crews come and fly the teen out for one last journey, after a daring and desperate rescue mission that appears to have arrived one day too late.

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