With all the resilience of youth, Matthew Scott returned home to London last week looking as if he had taken a stroll through Hyde Park. In fact, he had spent 12 days wandering alone in the Colombian rainforest without food and with only rainwater to drink after escaping from kidnappers.

James and Kate Scott, his ecstatically relieved parents, could hardly contain themselves. They had been through the nightmare that haunts every family as headstrong teenagers take off in their gap years to the ends of the earth.

For nearly two weeks they had believed their 19-year-old son was one of a group of hostages in the hands of gunmen somewhere in the vastness of South America, out of contact and beyond any help they could hope to bring.

Colombia is notoriously dangerous. During the mid-20th century it endured decades of bloody political strife known simply as la violencia. It later became infamous for its billionaire drug traffickers; and the cocaine profits stoked a civil war between Marxist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries, which has fuelled an epidemic of kidnappings.

Matthew’s parents had not wanted him to go. James Scott, a retired orthopaedic surgeon, said last week: “You could say he went without parental consent.” But, like tens of thousands of other youngsters on their gap years, Matthew thought foreign travel in remote areas was none too daunting.

His father was able to joke in the joy of reunion: “There are places you’d like your children to go. Obviously, I’d have preferred him to have gone to Croydon.” But what are parents to do? Indeed, should they do anything to rein in an adventurous spirit?

WHEN Matthew arrived in Colombia in May, he wanted to learn Spanish, polish his juggling and see a bit of the world. He went to the old city of Cali, where he studied Spanish and taught English.

At the end of his stint in Cali, Matthew was determined to see more of Colombia. Three weeks ago, he joined a group travelling to the Lost City, a spectacular 2,500-year-old ruin hidden in a forest in the Sierra Nevada — the “snowy mountains”.

This is an isolated, risky area, and he was apparently warned against going. But he was “very adventurous and impulsive”, said a friend in Colombia.

The warnings were vindicated in the most dramatic fashion. As Matthew and his 15-or-so companions slept in a cabin, a group of armed men burst in. They were from a small left-wing organisation that calls itself the National Liberation Army (ELN) The guerrillas lined the tourists up in the rain, stripped them of their valuables, then selected their hostages. Matthew was one of eight foreigners — two Britons, a German, a Spaniard and four Israelis — marched off into the trees.

In recent years, as kidnapping has become more urbanised in Colombia, the “quick-nap” has come into play. In this, the victim is grabbed for a few hours and released when either the family stumps up a few hundred dollars or the kidnappers have exhausted the victim’s debit cards.

Matthew’s kidnappers, however, followed the “traditional” tactic of taking their captives on a route march into the mountains and forests to evade capture. As they slogged through the sierra on the second day, Matthew saw a chance to escape. This time his impulsiveness helped him. “It was raining in the mountains, the visibility wasn’t good. The sides were very steep,” he said. “I jumped off a cliff very quickly. I was lucky not to have broken my arms and legs.”

For nearly two weeks he stumbled through the rainforest until he was found, skinny and dehydrated, by a group of Kogui Indians who gave him some soup, beans and oranges. A passing army patrol took him to hospital.

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