Amanda Eller, who went missing on 8 May during a hike in the Makawao Forest Reserve, said she fell off a cliff during her ordeal

A woman who was found alive in a forest on Maui on Friday after going missing when out hiking more than two weeks ago has said she struggled not to give up.

Amanda Eller told the New York Times that at such moments, she told herself: “The only option I had was life or death.

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“I heard this voice that said: ‘If you want to live, keep going.’ And as soon as I would doubt my intuition and try to go another way than where it was telling me, something would stop me, a branch would fall on me, I’d stub my toe or I’d trip,” said Eller, 35, a physical therapist and yoga instructor.

“So I was like: ‘OK, there is only one way to go.’”

Eller, from the town of Haiku, went missing on 8 May. Her white Toyota was found in the Makawao Forest Reserve parking lot, with her phone and wallet inside. Hundreds of volunteers searched as her parents offered a $10,000 reward.

Eller told the Times she had intended to go on a short walk. She went off the path to rest and when she resumed hiking, she got turned around.

“I wanted to go back the way I’d come but my gut was leading me another way – and I have a very strong gut instinct,” Eller said. “So, I said: ‘My car is this way and I’m just going to keep going until I reach it.’”

She wound up going deeper and deeper into the forest. During her ordeal she fell off a cliff, suffering a leg fracture. She also had abrasions on her ankles and a severe sunburn.

Finally, after 17 days of wandering, she saw a helicopter sent to find her.

“I looked up and they were right on top of me,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh my God,’ and I just broke down and started bawling.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rescue leads Javier Cantellops, top, and Chris Berquist show some of the technology used in the search for Amana Eller in Wailuku, Maui, on 25 May. Photograph: Bryan Berkowitz/AP

Javier Cantellops said he was searching for Eller from the helicopter along with Chris Berquist and Troy Helmers when they spotted her about 3.45pm on Friday near the Kailua reservoir, according to Maui’s police spokesman, Lt Gregg Okamoto, and the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Cantellops told the newspaper Eller was in the bed of a creek with waterfalls on either side.

The Maui fire department brought Eller to hospital, Okamoto said. Eller’s mother, Julia, told the Maui News her daughter survived by staying near a water source and eating wild raspberries, strawberry guavas and even a couple of moths. Eller tried to catch some crawfish but was “not very successful”, her mother said.

“She lost quite a bit of weight, as you can imagine, being lost for that amount of time,” Julia Eller said. “But she was able to survive it. She had the right skills and did the right things to buy time so that we had a chance to find her.”