A kayaker had a lucky escape this week. Adrian Simancas was paddling through the icy waters near Chile. A huge humpback whale came from the deep, and Mr Simancas ended up in its mouth. Luckily, the throat of a humpback stretches to a diameter of 40 cm. The humpback quickly spat Simancas back out into the ocean. Simancas' father captured the incident on video. He said he saw his son emerge from the waves next to "a gigantic animal".
Mr Simancas told journalists about his ordeal back on dry land. He said: "All this happened in a second. Something dark…enveloped me, and a slimy texture brushed my face." He continued: "I realized that I was in something's mouth, and I had been eaten." A newspaper reported: "For a few fleeting moments, Adrian's fate was in the jaws of the 40-ton [mammal]." Adrian said his close encounter with the whale would not stop him from rafting.
Try the same news story at these levels:
Humpback Whale - Level 5 or Humpback Whale - Level 6
Sources- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/world/americas/whale-swallowed-man-chile.html
- https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/14/whale-chile-survivor-adrian-simancas
- https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/13/americas/chile-humpback-whale-kayaker-intl-latam/index.html
Make sure you try all of the online activities for this reading and listening - There are dictations, multiple choice activities, drag and drop activities, sentence jumbles, which word activities, text reconstructions, spelling, gap fills and a whole lot more. Please enjoy :-)