Jamie Neal and Garrett Hand are heading upstream in a small boat on a jungle river, said Jose Luis Silva, Peru’s minister of tourism and commerce.
“They’re currently in a remote, paradise-like region of the Peruvian Amazon, which is difficult to access,” he told CNN.
But even as authorities trumpeted the news, Hand’s mother said in a statement that she won’t believe it until she hears directly from her son.
“We have not heard from them since January 25, nor have they accessed bank accounts since that time,” mother Francine Fitzgerald said. “We have only the worst to consider as to why.”
The couple, who hail from the San Francisco area, left last November and began a series of social media posts chronicling the trip of their dreams — a four-month bike adventure through South America.
“Will be riding my bike in other countries and out of contact for 4 months!” Neal wrote in a November Facebook post before flying with Hand to Buenos Aires, Argentina.
But for weeks, the couple shared photos online from their trek through Argentina, Chile and Peru, showing themselves posing beside their bikes on remote mountain roads, camping out in tents and smiling at the beach.
In late January, however, their Internet postings stopped and calls to their cell phones went unanswered. Family members say no one has been able to get in touch with them since then.
Fitzgerald said both the U.S. Embassy in Peru and the country’s interior ministry have called to say that Neal and Hand were spotted.
But that’s not enough, she said.
“Let me reiterate, until we have PROOF OF LIFE, we cannot celebrate these rumors and sightings,” she wrote on a Facebook page set up to facilitate a search for the couple. “Proof of life is my son’s voice on the phone and a picture of him holding the missing poster.” (CNN)