I just wanted to see my mother.Santiago (ANTARA News/AFP) - A 10-year-old Bolivian boy who hid on a truck in an effort to visit his mother in prison ended up in Chile after an unexpected 500-kilometer (300-mile) trek through the Andes mountains, officials said.
The boy, identified as Franklin Villca, ended up Saturday in the Chilean city of Iquique, some 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) north of Santiago, after a three-day journey without food or water in the compartment of a truck carrying minerals.
"I just wanted to see my mother," the boy told Chilean television TVN.
The boy got on the truck in the Bolivian town of Oruro thinking it would take him to Cochabamba, where his mother is incarcerated.
He ended up going in the wrong direction, on a route over mountains 3,000 meters (10,000 feet) above level sea.
Franklin got off the truck and wandered the streets of Alto Hospicio, near Iquique, where a woman named Margarita Flores took him home.
"I am a mother, and maybe his mother is suffering," she told local media.
The child was turned over to police but a court in Iquique decided to allow him to stay with the woman`s family until he can be returned to Bolivian authorities. (*)
Editor: Ella Syafputri
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