Buenos Aires, Mar 20 (AFP) A five-year-old boy who went missing during a family walk in Argentina was found safe and well after 24 hours lost in a desert in the west of the country.

Authorities in San Juan province and some 1,000 volunteers went searching for the boy -- with a former Dakar Rally motorcyclist finding him 21 kilometres (13 miles) from where he was last seen.

The child was hospitalised for slight dehydration.

"I was cold, I slept badly, leaning on a rock," he told the newspaper Clarin upon leaving hospital Tuesday.

The boy said he had drunk from a stream and eaten grass.

"He spent 24 hours in nature, that is not nothing," said Alberto Ontiveros, the man who found him, noting that wild pumas roam the area. (AFP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)