Chilling video shows a kayaker getting swallowed by a whale — now he's sharing what it felt like

Adrian Simancas, 23, was swallowed by a humpback whale while kayaking with his father in the Strait of Magellan in Chile. Simancas miraculously survived unscathed as the creature spat him out seconds later. The incident, which took place in the southernmost waters of Patagonia, close to the San Isidro Lighthouse, was caught on camera by Adrian's father, Dell, who was paddling nearby. 

The video which went viral on social media, showed the two riding the waves in their inflatable kayaks when a whale burst from the depths. For a few nerve-racking seconds, Adrian vanished underneath the waves—only to resurface moments later, gasping for air. He yelled, "I thought he'd swallowed me!" Adrian drifted toward his father, who urged him to stay calm. As per BBC, Adrian later detailed, "I spent a second realizing I was inside the mouth of something, that maybe it had eaten me, that it could have been an orca or a sea monster." Before he could think of some life-serving measure, the creature expelled him.

Recalling the harrowing incident, Adrian shared that he had felt something hit him from behind. "I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, I realized I was inside the whale's mouth. I felt a slimy texture brush my face." The boy continued, "I wondered what I could do if it had swallowed me since I could no longer fight to stop it. I had to think about what to do next...I was a little afraid of whether I would be able to hold my breath because I didn't know how deep I was, and I felt like it took me a long time to come up. I went up for two seconds, and finally, I got to the surface and realized that it hadn't eaten me."

As reported by Ladbible, Adrian added, "When I got out, I understood that, of course, it was probably out of curiosity that the whale had approached me, or maybe to communicate something." Dell for his part, explained, "I was worried for a second until I saw him coming up out of the sea. Then I saw something, a body, which I immediately interpreted as most likely being a whale because of its size." 

A camera mounted on Dell's kayak to film the rising waves captured everything. As Adrián watched the footage later, he was stunned by the sheer size of the whale. Reflecting on the same, Brazilian conservationist Roched Jacobson Sebaa explained why Adrián managed to escape so quickly—humpback whales have narrow throats, about the size of a household pipe, which are only built to swallow small fish and shrimp. After the encounter, the father and son decided to end their expedition given the worsening weather.