Xaisomboun province, Laos —  

Hungry and weak, the Laos cave survivors huddled together in damp darkness for 11 days, clinging to hope as a wall of water blocked their way out.

When they noticed the water finally start to recede, they somehow found the strength to attempt a daring escape, completely unaided –– shocking the rescue team above ground when they appeared at the cave entrance on Saturday.

Their courage was born from fear, one of the survivors told CNN in an exclusive interview.

Through narrow, treacherous tunnels, some waterlogged and cold enough for wetsuits, others so tight oxygen was scarce, the men navigated 260 meters (approximately 850 feet), from the chamber they’d been trapped in to the cave’s mouth, a distance equivalent to the height of a 78-story building.

One member of their group, who had entered the cave searching for gold, was guided to safety by a multinational team of cave experts using diving equipment a day earlier. The other four were left to wait for when conditions were safe enough.

“I was afraid because we were there alone,” Mee Singfamalai, a 23-year-old barber, told CNN from Long Tieng Hospital, where he is recovering.










The water was at least a meter deep in sections of the cave.

“Sometimes we had to dive, sometimes we had to crawl. We crawled slowly. The passage was just about the size of a person.”

The rescuers had first reached the group of five on Wednesday, an entire week after they had entered the cave and become trapped when heavy rain came down over the jungle outside, during the humid Laotian summer.

Exhausted and surviving only on water, they slept as much as they could, and they prayed that salvation would come.