Authorities in San Juan province and some 1,000 volunteers went searching for the boy -- with a former Dakar Rally motorcyclist finding him 21 kilometers (13 miles) from where he was last seen.
The child was hospitalized for slight dehydration."I was cold, I slept badly, leaning on a rock," he told the newspaper Clarin upon leaving hospital Tuesday.
The boy said he had drunk from a stream and eaten grass.
"He spent 24 hours in nature, that is not nothing," said Alberto Ontiveros, the man who found him, noting that wild pumas roam the area.
