Truth Times / Amy Lecons became an unexpected viral sensation after filming herself waiting for rescue on a mountainside in Albania after being bitten by a venomous snake. In this exclusive interview, the New Zealand-based Australian trail runner describes the bite, the failed emergency calls, the desperate call to her father, a doctor in Australia, and why she believes her story is being used to cover up serious problems in Albania’s healthcare system.
On June 22, 2026, Amy Lecons set out for what she expected to be a 90-minute run in the Valbona region of Albania. She didn’t return to her hostel for three days. After being bitten by a snake seven kilometers into an 11-kilometer hike, Lecons found herself stranded on a remote mountain trail, watching two calls to Albania’s emergency number 112 end abruptly, before reaching out to the person she trusted most: her father, a rural doctor thousands of kilometers away in South Australia.
What followed was an international rescue effort involving Interpol, a hostel owner in Shkodra, and a small mountain clinic — and, eventually, videos that would be viewed by millions of people.
biting
Lecons, who lives in Wanaka, New Zealand, had arrived in Valbona just three days earlier and was using the run to explore the terrain before a longer hiking trip.
She was returning from a seven-month injury, which made running especially meaningful for her as she was getting back into a familiar routine.
“Anyone who has found themselves unable to do something they love for a long time will understand the feeling of being back in a familiar routine. I found myself smiling during most of this run.”
She was traveling with little equipment.
“I had my phone, running poles, camera, water, sunscreen, and a Rubik’s Cube with me. Normally I would take a mini first aid kit with me, but for whatever reason, I didn’t have it with me that day.”
Lecons was no stranger to snakes. She had encountered them before in Greece and had seen them slithering across paths and roads in Albania, but her experience went even further: she had previously lived in Australia’s Northern Territory during a dry season, where she had encountered many snakes in the wild. She had even stepped on a slaty-grey, non-venomous snake once.
“That morning, I occasionally talked loudly, sang, or banged my sticks unnecessarily, and walked heavily with my feet to scare away any ‘nope rope’ [a humorous term for a snake] that might approach the path.”
Having just passed a large group of tourists/joggers, she admits she was a little less careful, thinking that any nearby snakes would have already moved away.
“I was 7km into this 11km run, descending and rounding a bend when a snake bit me.”
“I knew immediately that he had bitten me”
Lecons said there was no doubt about what had happened.
“I knew immediately that I had been bitten by a snake, as I felt a sharp pain in the Achilles tendon of my left leg. As if everything was in slow motion, I saw the snake below my feet, as I bent over it and stopped.”
Her first instinct, after cursing in pain, was to grab the phone.
“I knew a video was the best way to record the entire snake, for identification purposes. I had no idea, until I watched the video later, that I had started singing.”
Drawing on the first aid training she had received during her years living in Australia, she remembered the two things that mattered most: identifying the snake for medical teams and staying still.
“After filming the snake, I sat down on the path. I wasn’t afraid of the snake that was somewhere in the bushes around me, as it wasn’t likely to attack me again unless I provoked it.”
Chronology: two failed phone calls, then the father thousands of kilometers away
What followed was a series of events that were rapid and concentrated in a very short time. At 10:20, Lecons called 911.
“This call lasted less than a minute before they hung up on me. I asked for someone who spoke English, but while there was an occasional person on the other end of the phone who answered, I didn’t know what was being said and the call was disconnected.”
Two minutes later, at 10:22, with the call still unresolved, she turned to WhatsApp and called her father in Australia.
“Feeling helpless, at 10:22 I made a WhatsApp call to my father, who is a doctor in Australia.”
Her father, Robert Lecons, a rural GP in South Australia, showed her step-by-step how to immobilize her leg and keep her heart rate low, while she sent him her exact location via the What3Words app.
He then hung up the call to begin contacting Australian emergency services himself, while Amy called 112 a second time. This call lasted 53 seconds, before ending in the same way as the first.
At that moment, Lecons still did not fully understand the danger he was in.
“Honestly, I thought this was all a bit of an overreaction and that, in the worst case, I could get a bacterial infection from the piercing, but I followed my dad’s advice.”
She still didn’t know what kind of snake had bitten her.
With no proper medical equipment available, she improvised.
“Without proper compression bandages, I took off my socks and tank top and tied them around the bite area as best I could to keep the limb immobile.”
After that, for a while, she said she was mostly alone.
“Meanwhile, I was calling for help across the valley, but no one answered and no one found me on the trail.”
After about 15 minutes, she decided that a local contact might be more effective than the emergency line and called the owner of the Traveler Hostel in Shkodra, where she had stayed a short time earlier.
“He responded immediately, understood the seriousness of the situation, and started calling everywhere.”
She says that only weeks later did she realize that it was he who had made it possible for the Valbona Summer Clinic to connect with her, while Australian emergency services were contacting Interpol at almost the same time.
According to Lecons, an ambulance was dispatched about 25 minutes after the bite. Because she was on a remote mountain trail, it took the rescue team another 30 minutes to reach her.
Then, about an hour passed until she arrived at the Bajram Curri hospital, where she was given antivenom, a serum against snake venom.
An international rescue effort
Robert Lecons, speaking for this article, described the moment he realized how serious the situation was.
“I had done a Google Lens search very early in our conversation, from the video she sent me. I was aware that this was a really dangerous bite,” he said. “I was extremely scared about the risk of the snake venom, knowing that it was potentially life-threatening, Amy was far from medical help, and she was unable to get a response from emergency services.”
He described the helplessness of trying to help from the other side of the world.
“As a father, I desperately wanted to comfort my daughter. I felt so close to her on the phone, but at the same time so helpless; being literally on the other side of the world!”
He said he was “very concerned by the response to Amy’s emergency calls to 112. They had hung up on Amy twice. It was particularly disappointing, as I am also a rural doctor and deal with, among other things, first response and emergency medicine for my community.”
Balancing the standard protocol for snakebite with the reality of Amy’s situation was also a burden for her.
“I was trying to balance the principles of immobilization and pressure dressing, as we do for Australian snake bites, with my lack of specific knowledge about viper bites, and the real possibility that she would be better off going to help if she couldn’t get assistance.”
“I was trying to remain a calm and reliable voice of reassurance to him, while I wasn’t really sure if that was the right advice in the circumstances.”
“I called the South Australian Ambulance Service from a landline via our 000 number and was connected to the Emergency Operations Centre in Adelaide,” he said.
“The operator was absolutely fantastic. He had never been in this situation before, but he took the advice and started emailing Interpol on his own, with Amy’s information.”
He noted that Interpol has an international emergency response section for such situations and that, once the local response began in Albania, they acted swiftly.
At that point, the South Australian Ambulance Service ended the procedures with Interpol, as the local intervention in Albania had already begun.
Salvation itself
Lecons had sent a video of the snake to the Valbona Summer Clinic team while waiting for help, which she believes was critical.
“I am very grateful for their action. When they found me almost an hour after the snake had bitten me, they came out of the bushes and immediately got to work, tying a proper compression bandage around my leg.”
She noted that guidelines for treating what Lecons identified as the European horned viper, also known as the Poskok, remain inconsistent.
“There doesn’t seem to be a confirmed way to treat European horned viper venom, as some articles recommend zero compression and the use of bandages only for immobilization. Despite this, the nurse’s response ultimately led to my recovery.”
She was lucky in one respect: “Coincidentally, I was only 200 meters from a farm in the mountains that had road access, so as soon as they found me, the three rescuers carried me on a stretcher and carried me on their backs to a road where the ambulance could pick me up.”
She had only words of praise for those who pulled her out of the mountain.
“Many thanks to the first responders, the nurse for your quick action, the second aider who helped in my rescue and especially the gentleman who carried me on his back in the heat and over uneven terrain to expedite my rescue! Despite not being able to communicate using the same language, this is the epitome of Albanian hospitality.”
Moments of fear
Although her videos, filmed while waiting for rescue, show her remarkably calm, Lecons said the calm was not absolute.
“As soon as I knew an ambulance had been dispatched, between the calls for help, I had a lot of time to think.”
A Google search for “snakes in Albania” brought up images resembling the snake that had bitten him, along with warnings about the region’s most venomous species.
“As my ankle began to swell and the pain intensified, that’s when I began to panic about the outcome of my situation.”
The videos, she explained, were never intended for social media.
“The purpose of these videos was not for TikTok. I needed something to focus on and I have a very poor memory of events, so I knew that talking about what had happened in the video would be the only way I could later relate the events.”
“I thought I would show it to my family and friends later. It wasn’t until I watched the videos again the next day, when I knew I was safe, that I realized they were kind of funny and decided to release them to the public.”
She gently countered the impression that she had remained completely calm the entire time.
“Despite being able to have a conversation with myself and smile (a natural habit of mine), I can clearly see the panic in my eyes and voice.”
She attributed part of her calmness to the fact that there were few external stresses during the trip, an “emergency response system” inherited from her father, and management training, which had taught her to think critically.
But she was honest about the moments when the silence was broken.
“There were definitely moments when I started to panic during the first hour. The ambulance was having a hard time finding me with my WhatsApp location, even though I was on a trail and I also had What3Words.”
“I remember calling my dad and starting to cry, raising my voice and telling him I needed to get closer to the road because it was taking too long.”
“I really didn’t want to die alone on a trail and I blamed myself for getting myself into this situation, even though nothing I could have done differently would have changed the outcome.”
“In a calm voice, he reminded me to stay calm and trust the rescue team, so I did.”
Conditions at Bajram Curri Hospital
Once he arrived at the hospital, Lecons said he was faced with a health system that was clearly under pressure.
“As I mentioned in my videos, it took a day before they gave me toilet paper, after they claimed they didn’t have any available. On the second day, the staff said I had to find someone to buy my ice supply because the hospital had also run out of ice,” she said, noting that the hospital was located in a city with easy access to stores.
She also described other shortcomings.
“The room only had one electrical outlet, while every device in the room had to be used one after the other and through the same outlet.”
Since she was unable to walk and had pain when using crutches, she had to be transported in a wheelchair — but the doors were too narrow.
“Instead, I had to relieve myself on the bed.”
“I didn’t expect to receive the same treatment as in Australia or New Zealand, but hospitals should be able to provide an adequate service and, of course, before a conclusion is drawn about how good the treatment I received was, there should be a discussion about why hospitals lack these things.”
“The full story was left out”
Lecons said that her videos were taken by Albanian media without her knowledge.
“At the time, I was completely unaware that my story was being shared across Albanian media. I discovered my videos on Albanian news platforms through family where I was staying or by searching my name on Google and seeing articles that had been written this way.”
She believes that the media coverage was biased and selective.
“What bothered me was that the media had taken short excerpts from the best parts of my story and used them to create a very positive narrative, without addressing some of the important issues that exist in the healthcare system.”
She said no journalists had contacted her for comment prior to publication.
“While they rightly praised the first responders, I felt the stories ended up creating the impression that the healthcare system is robust and ready to respond to tourists in need.”
“They didn’t address the issue of 112 not responding and what the outcome would have been if I hadn’t had cell service or if I had been higher up in the mountain.”
She noted that Albania’s Ministry of Health shared her story, describing her as someone who had fully recovered.
“Thankfully, I have now made a miraculous recovery, but at the time I was unable to walk and the future was uncertain, as I had not been given any medical advice when I left hospital.”
She linked the media coverage to the broader political situation in Albania.
“Across Albania, there are currently ongoing protests for sustainability, against corruption, and for improving infrastructure and services.”
“After conversations with people around me, I realized that the best way I could help the people of Albania was not to simply highlight the hospitality of Albanians, but to actually tell the truth about my experience in the healthcare system as a tourist.”
She added: “A country cannot provide support to tourists if it is not first able to support its own people.”
She said that no representative of the Albanian government, emergency services, hospital or tourism authorities has contacted her directly.
Why she still recommends Albania
Despite her criticisms, Lecons remains very enthusiastic about the country itself.
“I was left completely mesmerized by the Albanian landscapes. From the old, steep cobblestone streets of Gjirokastra, to strolling past thousands of rectangular windows in Berat, or climbing the Pyramid to watch a spectacular sunset in Tirana… The Albanian Alps are a goldmine for hiking and trail running enthusiasts like me.”
She emphasized that praising Albanian hospitality is not incompatible with criticism of the healthcare system.
“In Albania I met extraordinary people who showed me a kindness that went beyond what was necessary, exceeding any expectations I had previously had for this country… It was important for me to make sure people knew this before criticizing aspects of the healthcare system.”
“I didn’t want the main message that people would take from my story to be something that would discourage them from traveling to this country.”
Her warning to other travelers
Lecons said he was surprised by how unprepared some of the other climbers in that region seemed.
“It was shocking to learn how many people were entering the mountains on the Balkan Peaks trail without any knowledge of the animals they might encounter, without an inReach or PLB (Personal Locator Beacon) device, and without sufficient first aid knowledge. I had only intended to be away for 90 minutes, while these climbers were on the trails for over 10 days.”
Her biggest regret is related to practical preparation.
“Upon reflection, I realized I should have been more prepared with a satellite communication device. In New Zealand they teach us that this can be a matter of life and death, and I was naive in thinking that this was not necessary even on the trails of Europe.”
She also believes that first aid training should be much more widespread.
“I think basic First Aid training should be mandatory for everyone, whether you’re traveling in a group or just on the trails… The number of people I spoke to over the following weeks who were unaware that there were snakes on the trails and what to do in that situation was quite surprising.”
For the biggest failure in her case, she was blunt:
“The biggest mistake that was made was the way that emergency call was handled. More attention needs to be paid to emergency services in Albania… there needs to be a way for tourists to get help through the 112 phone number. Hanging up on people without properly handling a request for help will lead to avoidable consequences and possible deaths among foreign travelers in the country.”
Life after going viral
Lecons said he has mostly tried to stay out of the spotlight while continuing to travel.
“I still can’t fully grasp the magnitude of the number of people who have now seen my story… I mostly try to keep the story quiet, simply saying that I was hurt for a while in Albania.”
She added, with a bit of humor:
“Most of the time, at least one person will call out that they recently saw a video of a girl getting bitten by a snake, before concluding that that girl was actually me. Now I laugh a lot about that.”
She hasn’t completely given up on walking alone, although her approach has changed.
“I’m definitely more mindful of my surroundings now, but I’m not going to completely stop going on adventures alone. I don’t have to let fear control my life, especially since trail running is a big part of who I am and what makes me happy.”
However, for now, she says she has: “found a lot of pleasure in slowing down and going for walks in a group or with a friend.”
When asked about the biggest lesson from this experience, she went beyond the practical aspects:
“My biggest lesson is simply a reminder of one of my main philosophies, and that is to be kind and remain optimistic. I believe the power of positive thinking is the greatest strength of all. In addition, I will now watch my steps more carefully.”
Who is Amy Lecons?
Beyond the viral videos, Lecons described herself modestly: “I’m not a content creator, I had a few videos that went viral, and now I’m in a privileged position where, if I wanted to share a message, I would have a platform where people would listen. However, the truth is that I’m Australian, currently living in New Zealand, in one of the most magical towns in the world, Wanaka. I’m a mediocre trail runner, usually injured, who loves being in the mountains or sleeping by the lake in my rooftop tent.”
She is currently on a solo backpacking trip through Europe, “already past my original finish date, spending whatever money I have left to discover who I am and create unforgettable memories along the way.”
Her final message to readers was simple: “Be curious. Listen and read, but also do your research and ask questions if you can’t get the full picture. Self-education is such an important skill and, unfortunately, it took me many years to figure out how to do that.”