A kayaker in the Strait of Magellan off the coast of Chile was knocked off his inflatable vessel by a humpback whale, which swallowed him whole.

Adrian Simancas managed to get out of the whale’s mouth and swim to his father’s kayak.

“I thought I was dead,” the son told The Associated Press. “I thought it had eaten me, that it had swallowed me. When I came up and started floating, I was scared that something might happen to my father too, that we wouldn’t reach the shore in time, or that I would get hypothermia.

The drama came when Mr. Simancas, 24, and his father, Dell Simancas, were in separate kayaks near Punta Arenas, Chile, at around 3 p.m. Saturday. The son felt a hard knock to his back before ending up sucked into the whale’s mouth.

“I saw something between blue and white that passed close to my face,” Adrian told Spanish news agency EFE as translated from Spanish. “It was like on one side and above me. I didn’t understand what was happening. I sank and thought it had eaten me.”

Video taken by the father shows him paddling on the surface before the whale’s mouth juts out of the water and swallows him. 

He then realized it was a whale.

“When I was inside it, I remembered Pinocchio, who was also swallowed by one,” Adrian told El Pais.

The two safely made it back to shore uninjured and plan to go back on the water in warmer conditions.

“I’ll wait for better weather conditions, as winter is coming in a few months in Chile and it is really very harsh in the far south, and then I’ll go back to the water. That is, I will wait until next year to take up [canoeing] again,” the son said.

• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.