One moment, he was paddling peacefully. The next, he was inside a whale.
Adrián Simancas and his father, Dell, were enjoying a routine kayaking trip in Bahía El Águila, a stunning but remote part of Chilean Patagonia. The last thing they expected was an encounter straight out of a biblical tale.
Without warning, the sea beneath them shifted. A massive humpback whale, one of the ocean’s gentle giants, erupted from the depths—right beneath Adrián’s bright yellow kayak. In the blink of an eye, the young kayaker disappeared. His father, watching in horror, could only stare as his son was engulfed by the whale’s cavernous mouth.
Then, just as quickly as it had happened, the whale spat Adrián back out, as if realising its mistake. The entire episode lasted mere seconds, but for Adrián, time seemed to stop.
“I thought I was dead,” he later told The Associated Press, still shaken. “I thought it had eaten me, that it had swallowed me.”
As Adrián resurfaced, gasping for air, a new wave of panic hit—was his father safe? Could he make it back to the kayak in the freezing water? His father’s voice cut through the shock: Watch the video.
With a desperate push, Adrián reached his father’s kayak, and Dell hauled him back aboard. Miraculously, both men made it back to shore completely unharmed—physically, at least.
The Strait of Magellan, where the incident occurred, is no stranger to dramatic wildlife encounters. A prime destination for adventure seekers, its frigid waters remain a formidable challenge even in summer, with temperatures dipping as low as 39°F (4°C). Surviving an unexpected plunge here is no small feat.
While whale attacks on humans are exceedingly rare, marine experts have noted a rise in whale-related incidents—though usually due to collisions with cargo ships rather than mistaken mouthfuls of kayakers.
This is not the first time a kayaker has had an accidental run-in with a humpback. In 2020, two women in California were nearly swallowed by a whale off Avila Beach. Like Adrián, they were spat out just in time, their life jackets ensuring they bobbed safely back to the surface.
For Adrián Simancas, the encounter was as surreal as it was terrifying. One minute he was floating on the open water, the next he was inside the jaws of the deep. He will never forget the sight of darkness closing in, the sensation of being lifted by a force beyond comprehension—nor the relief of seeing daylight again.
And next time? He might just stick to dry land.
