Kidnapped American had long marches and
            sleepless nights
 

                  BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- During the day, Donald Lee Cary was often
                  subjected to exhausting marches through rugged mountains. At night, he lay
                  huddled in a pup tent, his fitful sleep punctured at times by army mortar fire
                  and warplanes strafing nearby rebel positions.

                  For the most part, though, the 64-year-old Texas native was lucky: The only
                  injuries he suffered from his 170 days in captivity were a possibly fractured
                  rib, shoulder and vertebra, sustained when he fell in a mountain gorge in
                  May. They have long since healed.

                  On Monday, a day after leftist rebels released the retired Exxon executive,
                  Cary said he was weighing whether to remain in his wife's homeland and
                  whether to sell the 30-cow dairy farm just outside Bogota where he was
                  kidnapped on March 21.

                  "We haven't really had time to assess it with our family," Cary, who is from
                  Lubbock, Texas, but has lived in Colombia for 19 years, said during an
                  interview in the comfort of his Bogota living room.

                  He looked fit and relaxed, still wore the gray beard he had grown to ward
                  off insects, and was about 2 inches trimmer at the waist.

                  Cary wouldn't discuss the ransom paid for his release. But he did allow that
                  he had no kidnapping insurance unlike most foreign executives working here
                  and now has debts to pay.

                  Cary's captors turned him over to the International Red Cross on Sunday
                  near Medina, 40 miles southeast of Bogota, in foothills of the eastern
                  cordillera where he was forced to roam with rebels blamed for the bulk of
                  ransom kidnappings in the Bogota region.

                  For a time, he was held with four American birdwatchers kidnapped two
                  days after his capture. Three of them were freed less than a month later; one
                  escaped earlier.

                  Life on the trail was grueling, uncomfortable and tedious: Cary was
                  constantly on the move during one 28-day stretch, spending the night in 26
                  different places.

                  He had to wash his own clothes and eating utensils and set up and strike his
                  own tent, while subsisting on a diet rich in rice and noodles but poor in
                  protein and produce.

                  But his captors from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or
                  FARC, always treated him with respect.

                  "I was never mistreated in any way, neither physically nor psychologically
                  nor verbally," Cary said. "It was in their best interest to take care of you."
                  Kidnapping is a prime revenue source for the FARC, Colombia's oldest and
                  largest rebel group.

                  Cary's ordeal coincided with a big push by Colombia's new president,
                  Andres Pastrana, to try to make peace with the guerrillas, who have been
                  fighting the state for nearly four decades.

                  Fluent in Spanish, he discussed peace prospects with guerrilla commanders
                  and found them "extraordinarily cautious" about accepting Pastrana's
                  overtures.

                  Rebel commanders told Cary that they want to take power through elections
                  but are afraid of being assassinated once they quit the armed struggle, as has
                  happened with more than 3,000 former rebels from other movements who
                  demobilized over the past decade.

                  Cary said he also gained insight into the guerrilla struggle and how it is largely
                  represented by poor peasants.

                  "There are really great social problems and a lot of these people come from
                  families where they've been mistreated as children and they've run away to
                  join the rebels," he said, adding that some guerrillas were so ignorant that
                  they asked him if the United States and Colombia shared a border.

                  Cary's abduction was not uncommon in a country with the world's highest
                  kidnapping rate. He was snatched by three gunmen as he left his farm at
                  dusk on a Saturday night, and driven in his own car through Bogota.

                  As they were leaving the capital, the gunmen identified themselves as from
                  the FARC's 53rd Front and Cary knew he would be away for some time
                  from his wife, Lucia, who has been bedridden for more than two years with
                  multiple sclerosis.

                  "I never thought that I had enough (money) to be considered a kidnap
                  victim," Cary said. "The area where my farm is has never been subject to
                  any kind of problems of that type. I was the first one."

                  With Cary's release, at least eight foreigners remained captive in Colombia:
                  American Donald W. Riedel, who was seized on Feb. 24, 1997; two
                  Germans, a Frenchman, a Chilean, an Italian, a Canadian and an Ecuadoran,
                  according to the government.
 

                  Copyright 1998   The Associated Press.