Rescued hiker's survival story: 17 days in Hawaii forest on berries, river water and smarts

It had been more than two weeks that she had been lost in a thick Hawaiian forest, and Amanda Eller was at an end. The 35-year-old doctor of physical therapy was at a place where she could no longer go forward because of the terrain. With a fractured leg and no shoes, she sure wasn't going to go back. The area she found herself in had little to no food. She stayed there for a day and a half and, as Eller's mother and a friend told reporters Saturday as they detailed the rescued woman's ordeal, she began to resign herself to the dire possibility that she might die there. "It came down to life and death -- and I had to choose. I chose life. I wasn't going to take the easy way out. Even though that meant more suffering in me for myself," Eller told CNN affiliate KHON. She tried to keep her spirits up. She had conquered so much to get to this point. She picked berries and guava to eat when she could find them. She drank water only when it was clear enough and looked like it wouldn't make her sicker. She took care of a bum knee and nursed sunburn so bad it got infected. She walked without her shoes, which had been swept away in a flash flood when she was trying to dry them out. She listened for the helicopters. They had come before, several times and she had waved as best she could, but they flew away. On Friday, Javier Cantellops, a friend of Eller's, went up with other searchers in a rented helicopter to look for a place where they could access the woods where Cantellops thought Eller might be headed. They weren't even really looking for her per se, but ways to get dropped off near points of where they might pick up her trail...MORE