10-year-old Bolivian seeking mom ends up in Chile

SANTIAGO, (AFP) - A 10-year-old Bolivian boy who hid on a truck in an effort to visit his mother who had just been released from prison ended up in Chile after an unexpected 500-kilometer (300-mile) trek through the Andes mountains, officials said.

The boy, identified as Franklin Vilca, ended up Saturday in the Chilean city of Iquique, some 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) north of Santiago, after a three-day journey without food or water in the compartment of a truck carrying minerals.

"I just wanted to see my mother," the boy told Chilean television TVN.

The boy got on the truck in the Bolivian town of Oruro thinking it would take him to Cochabamba, where his mother had been incarcerated.

He ended up going in the wrong direction, on a route over mountains 3,000 meters (10,000 feet) above sea level .

Franklin got off the truck and wandered the streets of the Chilean town of Alto Hospicio, on the outskirts of Iquique, where a woman named Margarita Flores took him home.

"I am a mother, and maybe his mother is suffering," she told local media.

The child was turned over to police but a court in Iquique decided to allow him to stay with the woman's family until he can be returned to Bolivian authorities.

Even though the boy's mother had been released from prison she was under a court order not to leave the country. Bolivian diplomats said they will send an official to Iquique to deliver documents confirming the mother's identity, the first step to having Chile return him.

The boy's mother however managed to talk to her son on the telephone.

"I want to see you," Franlin told her, in an exchange broadcast on the Bolivian television network ATB. "I just wanted to go to Cochabamba -- hurry up and come pick me up, mommy!"

"I was in jail but I'm out now," his mother replied, choking on tears. "You won't be left with your father or your brothers any more, you'll be with me, my dear son."